U.S. Politics 2017: You Flynn Some, You Lose Some

[Maithanet]

9 minutes ago, Inigima said:

This seems to be the same point, not the opposite. 

How so?  Fez's post was that Busby could have a small, but potentially significant impact benefiting Jones if he siphoned off a few unenthusiastic Moore voters.  I countered that he might get the support of an equally large (or larger?) group of unethusiastic Jones voters. 

I am doubtful that Busby will have much impact on the race, but if it does, you cannot assume it will help Jones. 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Fez said:

Assuming the aides aren't wrong (and to be fair, there's been a few times this year where senators contradicted their aides statements) or overstating things, this is big. Daines isn't gutsy enough to be the deciding no vote, so if he's a no, there has to be at least 3-4 others.

As far as I know, Johnson is still the only one to publicly personally say 'no' though.

Lankford is sounding like he's still not quite on board with the tax plan, citing concerns about exploding the deficit.

[Inigima]

11 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

How so?  Fez's post was that Busby could have a small, but potentially significant impact benefiting Jones if he siphoned off a few unenthusiastic Moore voters.  I countered that he might get the support of an equally large (or larger?) group of unethusiastic Jones voters. 

I am doubtful that Busby will have much impact on the race, but if it does, you cannot assume it will help Jones. 

I can't find a way to interpret your original post that way, but I understand your point now. That's true, I suppose. I have a hard time believing that the balance wouldn't favor Jones, though -- you might lose some Jones voters to him, but I think he'd capture more Moore voters by a substantial margin.

This is 2017 though so I just assume the worst thing will happen every time and Moore will win.

[Paladin of Ice]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

They care about certain constituents - namely, the very loud ones that vote in primaries. 

And that's basically it.

For them, it's essentially the only thing worth worrying about. Republican voters in general elections rally around the person with the R next to their name, and almost nothing can stop that. So for a Republican there are two hurdles to getting elected: winning the primary, and if you're not in a safe red district, hoping Democratic voters don't turn out because of (insert all the various excuses Democratic voters use to not vote for people who may agree with their position upwards of 90% of the time here)

And since generally only the most politically motivated and/or extreme factions vote in the primaries, by default that favors the more extreme Republican. Then when that election's batch of crazies fail to be sufficiently extreme or fail to implement enough extreme policies to satisfy the primary voters, they have to worry about a new primary against newer and crazier candidates.

This is one of many reasons why I think we need to either get rid of or massively change the system we use to select candidates.

[Maithanet]

14 minutes ago, Inigima said:

I can't find a way to interpret your original post that way, but I understand your point now. That's true, I suppose. I have a hard time believing that the balance wouldn't favor Jones, though -- you might lose some Jones voters to him, but I think he'd capture more Moore voters by a substantial margin.

This is 2017 though so I just assume the worst thing will happen every time and Moore will win.

I also expect Moore will win.  But much as I'm trying to keep my hopes down, I cannot completely dismiss Jones' chances.  The possibility that Jones might somehow pull this out and get a 3 year rental of an Alabama senate seat is just too tantalizing. 

[DMC]

Interesting article at 538 on John Roberts and his leftward shift.  I tend to share the skepticism of legal scholars detailed in the piece.  But, while Martin-Quinn scores are a flawed measure, the trend is undeniably compelling.

[Morpheus]

"Big, beautiful tax cuts"-  is that really the official WH line now?

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

"Big, beautiful tax cuts"-  is that really the official WH line now?

Future GOP families will argue whether they should be called Ivanka or Melania's tax cuts.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

17 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Interesting article at 538 on John Roberts and his leftward shift.  I tend to share the skepticism of legal scholars detailed in the piece.  But, while Martin-Quinn scores are a flawed measure, the trend is undeniably compelling.

Which is why, with lifetime appointments.  The Trump Presidency is no guarantee of a right shifted Court.

[KingintheNorth4]

20 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

"Big, beautiful tax cuts"-  is that really the official WH line now?

"Big, beautiful tax cuts for the wealthy" would be a much more accurate line. 

[Martell Spy]

31 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

"Big, beautiful tax cuts"-  is that really the official WH line now?

Wasn't it supposed to officially be called the Cut, Cut, Cut Act?

Vote Suppressors Unleashed

A district judge might be handing Donald Trump a chance to supercharge voter suppression.Trump taunts 'Pocahontas' during Native American event

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/11/donald_trump_will_supercharge_voter_suppression_if_the_rnc_consent_decree.html

Trump taunts 'Pocahontas' during Native American event

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/27/trump-navajo-code-talkers-pocahontas-260989?lo=ap_a1

 

[Morpheus]

Cut, cut, cut was Trump original suggestion for its name,  he called it big , beautiful on twitter and Sanders repeated it today.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Roberts is probably a better and less hypocritical 'originalist' than that hack Scalia (PBUH), and DC is well known to have a liberalizing influence on many if not most justices. Cant read too much into it though, as the article itself mentions.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Roberts is probably a better and less hypocritical 'originalist' than that hack Scalia (PBUH), and DC is well known to have a liberalizing influence on many if not most justices. Cant read too much into it though, as the article itself mentions.

I think DC's liberalizing influence is overwrought.  It doesn't explain Alito, or Thomas, or Scalia, or the 7 of 26 justices since 1937 that shifted right that the article notes (albeit 12 shifted left).  But yeah like I said, still skeptical, check back in a few years.

[lokisnow]

roberts is not liberal, it's just that other than obamacare, most of the cases he get a liberal score on are social issues that don't drive his masters in the donor caste. So the anecdotal details of the cases in this instance matter more than the overall trend. Democrats had a lot of social victories in the supreme court, but for all the other stuff, they mostly have gotten hosed, consistently.

[Mexal]

Project Veritas tried to set up a sting of the Washington Post by claiming a false story about a woman who had an abortion when she was 15 because of Moore. During their normal due diligence, they realized she was full of shit. Here is the story. I don't think people realize how much work these journalists have to go through to print something.

Quote

A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets.

In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.

The Post did not publish an article based on her unsubstantiated account. When Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her story and an Internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not working with any organization that targets journalists.

But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. The organization sets up undercover “stings” that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias.

 

[Frog Eater]

42 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

Cut, cut, cut was Trump original suggestion for its name,  he called it big , beautiful on twitter and Sanders repeated it today.

Maybe the the media should start calling it the "Big, not so beautiful deficit balloon". 

Perception is reality. If you steal the perception that this is a tax cut and instead replace it with this is a deficit balloon, the media can sway support away from this. 

[Fez]

2 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Lankford is sounding like he's still not quite on board with the tax plan, citing concerns about exploding the deficit.

Yeah, it looks like Daines, Lankford, and Moran are the unexpected holdouts. McCain, Flake, and Corker are the wildcards. Collins is maybe still in opposition (but Murkowski is not due to the ANWR provision). And then there's Johnson:

Republicans only have a one-vote majority on the committee, so if Johnson votes no there the bill isn't even getting to the floor. Republicans need to get him on board, which I suspect they will eventually; but every delay helps. Especially with the Federal shutdown looming on December 8 and the possibility of Jones winning on December 12 (though I believe he, or Moore, won't be sworn in until the first week of January).

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

roberts is not liberal, it's just that other than obamacare, most of the cases he get a liberal score on are social issues that don't drive his masters in the donor caste. So the anecdotal details of the cases in this instance matter more than the overall trend. Democrats had a lot of social victories in the supreme court, but for all the other stuff, they mostly have gotten hosed, consistently.

Well, in a sense yes, the unidimensionality assumption of Martin-Quinn scores is one of their drawbacks (although it's not "anecdotal details").  Unlike DW-NOMINATE, there is no second dimension in the scores to account for potentially systemic differences in voting behavior - such as on social as opposed to economic issues.  So yeah, the notion Roberts is primarily liberal only social issues is an interesting question that can't be tested using Martin-Quinn scores.  To be fair, here's their justification of the unidimensionality assumption in their original article:

Quote

We first correlate our measure with the percentage conservative voting on civil rights, civil liberties, economics, and federalism cases across a justice's career [these measures, as well as the percent liberalism scores below, are taken from Epstein et al. (2001)]. This is in the spirit of the methodological audit of Epstein and Mershon (1996). The results are quite interesting: the posterior means correlate with these issue areas at -0.86, -0.83, -0.70, and -0.60, respectively (J = 29). These clearly outperform the scores of Segal and Cover (1989), which correlate at 0.63, 0.60, 0.43, and 0.33 (J = 29). This justifies the unidimensionality assumption because one dimension explains a good deal of variance across many issue areas. [146]

 

[Martell Spy]

Here’s How Republicans Plan to Get Their Tax Bill Out of the Senate

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/how-the-gop-plans-to-get-its-tax-bill-out-of-the-senate.html

 

CBO: the Senate Republican tax bill takes billions from the poor

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/27/16704664/senate-republican-tax-bill-health-cut-poor