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US Politics: For Whom the Bell Tolls


Fragile Bird

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1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

Not to mention one you will certainly lose in 2020 even if you win.

National trends have a very strong impact on the (overall) results of midterms, and Roy Moore has definitely been nationalized - in part with the help of Trump.

I really don't see losing in Alabama as "a big fat L."  More like a gimme for Republicans they managed to squander into competitive.

There's only 33 games every two years and political specialists decide the best way to get a winning record is to not show up to play the game in twenty of the contests.

An L is an L, and in the deadly serious team sport that is American politics, any one L in the senate is exactly equal to any other L. And if you're not trying to win the top of the bell curve games you're going to get your ass handed to you every season by one of your own cupcakes, and the D.C. Dipshits are always perpetually surprised their " lets build up a supply of Ls before ever playing a game" fails year in and year out. Because losing strategies are always losing strategies and you don't get to say an L is not an L just because you cognitively don't want to face your own parties massive team failings.

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pus
pəs/
noun
  1. a thick yellowish or greenish opaque liquid produced in infected tissue, consisting of dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
    synonyms:
    Donald Trump
     
    So in reporting tonight I heard that our sloth President watches 4 to 8 hours of television a day. 
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5 hours ago, Altherion said:

One of the reasons it's hard to truly dislike Trump and Bannon

Let me stop you there. For any reasonable person, it's really, really, really EASY to truly dislike Trump and Bannon. 

You, personally, might find it hard. But that ain't David Brooks' fault.

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6 hours ago, Altherion said:

One of the reasons it's hard to truly dislike Trump and Bannon is the sheer quantity of utterly awful people who are opposed to them. Driving pseudo-intellectuals like Brooks out of major political parties (where's he going to go? will the Democrats take him?) is practically a public service.

Delete your account.

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My prediction: +6 for Jones.

Alabama Democrats had a large majority in the State House until 2010, and held the governorship until 2002 (and that particular election was likely stolen by the Republicans). A lot of Republican voters in Alabama are former Democratic voters, so the idea that they would never, ever vote for a Democrat under any conditions is wrong.

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2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

There's only 33 games every two years and political specialists decide the best way to get a winning record is to not show up to play the game in twenty of the contests.

An L is an L, and in the deadly serious team sport that is American politics, any one L in the senate is exactly equal to any other L. And if you're not trying to win the top of the bell curve games you're going to get your ass handed to you every season by one of your own cupcakes, and the D.C. Dipshits are always perpetually surprised their " lets build up a supply of Ls before ever playing a game" fails year in and year out. Because losing strategies are always losing strategies and you don't get to say an L is not an L just because you cognitively don't want to face your own parties massive team failings.

Since we're using sports analogies I think the most apt for American politics, and especially congressional elections, is the baseball adage "every team is going to win 54 games, every team is going to lose 54 games, it's what you do with the other 54 that counts."  That was true even before polarization.  Now it's probably forty percent rather than a third for each party - and that counts the ~468 contests every two years in both chambers. 

Recognizing that reality doesn't mean you don't compete in every game - and it's not a "strategy" one way or the other - it just means the Alabama Senate is definitely one of those 54 games the GOP should win.

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6 hours ago, forkrul wassail said:

lol, adam, rethink this

 

Adam Baldwin has always been an asshole. I can't even call it an open secret, it's not a secret at all. He's been very publicly an asshole for years. That particular tweet is probably specifically meant to troll liberals.

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9 hours ago, Altherion said:

One of the reasons it's hard to truly dislike Trump and Bannon is the sheer quantity of utterly awful people who are opposed to them. Driving pseudo-intellectuals like Brooks out of major political parties (where's he going to go? will the Democrats take him?) is practically a public service.

Plenty of pseudo-intellectuals like Brooks  Altherion who stay and worship Trump and Bannon tho.

 

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7 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

Jones +1.

Followed by immediate demands for a recount.  During the recount, a pile of ballots for Moore mysteriously appears, enough to give him a borderline victory.  Democrats call fowl, but Trumps new Voter Fraud crew calls those claims overblown. 

Not too far off. Alabama Supreme Court, in secret without a hearing, made a ruling that Alabama doesn’t have to maintain digital vote records. So no way to verify that the paper ballots are the same as the digital votes that are counted. Thread in this below.

 

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2 hours ago, Gorn said:

My prediction: +6 for Jones.

Alabama Democrats had a large majority in the State House until 2010, and held the governorship until 2002 (and that particular election was likely stolen by the Republicans). A lot of Republican voters in Alabama are former Democratic voters, so the idea that they would never, ever vote for a Democrat under any conditions is wrong.

It's a very different political climate these days.  Back then conservative sorts of people were voting democratic for economic reasons.  These days, they vote Republican primarily for anti woman, anti POC, and anti lgbt reasons, and those things are infinitely more important to them than the economic ones.  To them, anything that values women, POC and LGBT folks is evil regardless if it would improve their own lives. 

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I had to laugh at a report on Roy Moore on Sky News. It just showed the massive gulf between the liberal establishment and people in the religious heartlands of America. The matter-of-fact style of the British reporter made it even more striking. His intention was to state all the reasons why Roy Moore is a terrible candidate, by listing some extreme beliefs of the man.

So he starts off by saying the guy is a Christian then proceeds to his anti-gay stance and potential controversial racial issues in his past, and then tries to top it off  by saying that he believes Islam is a false religion. The last part was just so strikingly out of touch to me. Because while I can fully understand why the overly sensitive, humanist Europeans (and I include the British here) may find the idea that all religions are not equal to be astoundingly offensive, the basic principle of the Christian faith is that all other religions are false.

So the mere fact that Moore is a Christian, really should by default mean that he would view Islam as a false religion. That in itself does not make him some kind of extremist. The other points against Moore may remain quite valid, but this one was just absurd.

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Moore goes further than many other Christian politicians in saying that Muslims should not even be allowed to hold government positions. Some Christians are able to respect other beliefs while still adhering to their values.

Really the whole Evangelical movement is a disgrace, pure religious extremism. It is rank tribalism and racism, misogyny and homophobia are woven into its very fabric. Courting lunatics like that is a big reason why the Repubilcan party has gone so far off the deep end.

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1 minute ago, Morpheus said:

Moore goes further than many other Christian politicians in saying that Muslims should not even be allowed to hold government positions. Some Christians are able to respect other beliefs while still adhering to their values.

Really the whole Evangelical movement is a disgrace, pure religious extremism. It is rank tribalism and racism, misogyny and homophobia are woven into its very fabric. Courting lunatics like that is a big reason why the Repubilcan party has gone so far off the deep end.

Well thanks for your opinion.

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The majority of American Christians are not fundamentalist. Evangelicals are estimated at anywhere from 25% to 30% of the overall population, but that's self-reporting and does not necessarily encompass the actual beliefs they have, just what they loosely associate themselves with. Only 9% of those who regularly attend church services self-identify as evangelicals. I'm unaware of any survey attempting to quantify what percentage of Americans would share Moore's belief, but I'd guess the number is very much a minority opinion.

 

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6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

There's only 33 games every two years and political specialists decide the best way to get a winning record is to not show up to play the game in twenty of the contests.

An L is an L, and in the deadly serious team sport that is American politics, any one L in the senate is exactly equal to any other L. And if you're not trying to win the top of the bell curve games you're going to get your ass handed to you every season by one of your own cupcakes, and the D.C. Dipshits are always perpetually surprised their " lets build up a supply of Ls before ever playing a game" fails year in and year out. Because losing strategies are always losing strategies and you don't get to say an L is not an L just because you cognitively don't want to face your own parties massive team failings.

I don't think Democrats get any benefit from Moore being in the Senate; the whole "shame the Republicans with Moore as their face" won't work because Republicans have no shame. However, in a state that is usually R+30 or more, an R+12 win would usually be an incredibly good showing and a boost for other, easier races. Sports analogies don't fit politics because in politics not all competitions are equal; in some of them one team is getting spotted an awful lot of points before things get started.

However, because of Moore's baggage and the election being two weeks before Christmas, it's not possible to draw conclusions here. There's no baseline for this race, whereas there is for a generic R in Alabama during a regular election, so there's no way of knowing what exactly a good showing for a Democrat here is.

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