U.S. Politics NEXT!

[DMC]

@Tywin et al.

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Idk man. You’re more optimistic than I am. I can count close to ten seats that could be problematic for Democrats while I only see two for Republicans. I’ve seen the same generic ballet polling, but that can often be meaningless. That said, I actually think there’s one seat that could go blue if you’re right that you didn’t mention: Texas. I honestly think Ted Cruz is beatable if you nominate the right candidate who lines up with what you need to elect a Democrat in Texas.

Well sure, in a regular cycle there would be at least a dozen Dem seats in danger.  Except all available data tells us this is not a normal cycle.  And generic ballots are pretty solid indicators - they're most certainly not "often meaningless."  An overestimation?  Sure, but that's far and away from the hand waving you seem to be doing.  I think Cruz was poachable, but no quality Dem rose to the occasion.  He's facing the JV squad now.

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And it wasn’t just the economy. Take healthcare for example. The early repeal plans were targeting 2021 as the year when the deep cuts began. That was purely for electoral reasons. Or proposed cuts to entitlements. The pain is always delayed so that Republicans don’t get punished in the short term.

Yep, agreed.

1 hour ago, WinterFox said:

 Did anyone put money on 'before it's signed' in the Susan Collins' regret pool? 

I heavily and constantly lamented how stupid Collins was being from the get-go.  Does that count?

[Dr. Pepper]

On the radio today there was speculation that Corker may be eyeing SOS now that Tillerson's days may be numbered. I figured there had to be another reason he went with this tax bill after saying he wouldnt.

[ThinkerX]

One does have to wonder how the Republican congress-people plan on avoiding being lynched - possibly literally - when they head home for the recess.  Especially when the mobs visit them at home.

[SerHaHa]

I like Rosie, but she screwed up big time here IMO.  Unless she can prove her Twitter account was hacked or it was someone else using it, she's plainly broken the bribery laws of the USA.  Considering how much Trump and her have clashed in the past, I'm sure she'll get special attention regarding this.  Why didn't she just offer to fund these senators future campaigns, or donate the $ legally in some way, which is done ALL the time, instead of outright offering to bribe them both.  Rosie probably didin't realize she was breaking the law, however ignorance of the law rarely is a defense that succeeds.  I understand her motivations, but wow.  Plus, she must have some serious $$$ to be able to throw 4 million around so casually, which in itself says something which the right will use to attack her.

 

 

[Morpheus]

Yesterday was the most fitting, if horrifying, end to 2017 I can imagine. After delivering a massive Chritmas gift to corporate America, Republicans descended on the White House to take turns licking Donald Trump ass. The pure joy on his face as this "greatest president" watched underlings debase themselves in effusively praising him in a manner worthy of Un or Putin was revolting.

There really is no such thing as a decent Republican in congress. It doesn't matter that they did not, could not, believe the shit they were saying, in appeasing a dictator, the important thing is to tell him what he wants to hear no matter how far fetched.

[LongRider]

2 hours ago, Morpheus said:

Yesterday was the most fitting, if horrifying, end to 2017 I can imagine. After delivering a massive Chritmas gift to corporate America, Republicans descended on the White House to take turns licking Donald Trump ass. The pure joy on his face as this "greatest president" watched underlings debase themselves in effusively praising him in a manner worthy of Un or Putin was revolting.

There really is no such thing as a decent Republican in congress. It doesn't matter that they did not, could not, believe the shit they were saying, in appeasing a dictator, the important thing is to tell him what he wants to hear no matter how far fetched.

And this is vomit inducing;

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Mudguard

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It's been very clear for a while now that the tax cut was going to be passed, and that only small tweaks were going to be needed to get it to the finish line, so today's news was already priced in.  Only a last minute significant change to the proposed tax cut would have caused a major swing, and that didn't happen.

I understand that, but typically the market reacts to the passage of major pieces of legislation, even if it’s already been priced in. And considering this legislation was a monster giveaway to Wall St., it seems odd that the market dipped after it passed.

[Fragile Bird]

46 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Mudguard

I understand that, but typically the market reacts to the passage of major pieces of legislation, even if it’s already been priced in. And considering this legislation was a monster giveaway to Wall St., it seems odd that the market dipped after it passed.

"Buy on rumor, sell on news"

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 hours ago, dmc515 said:

@Tywin et al.

Well sure, in a regular cycle there would be at least a dozen Dem seats in danger.  Except all available data tells us this is not a normal cycle.  And generic ballots are pretty solid indicators - they're most certainly not "often meaningless."  An overestimation?  Sure, but that's far and away from the hand waving you seem to be doing.  I think Cruz was poachable, but no quality Dem rose to the occasion.  He's facing the JV squad now.

Meaningless might have been the wrong choice of words, but they can be misleading. You know people have different feelings about Congress as a whole and their own representative. This polling is more favorable to Democrats than I’ve seen in the past, but I have seen generic polls previously that had Dems with a solid lead only for very little to change as far as the total seat count goes. Pointing that out is not hand waving. It’s healthy skepticism.

Plus, there’s one thing I’ve yet to see discussed on this forum. There’s going to be a giant increase in fund raising for Republican candidates this cycle because of the tax legislation. What effect do you think that’s going to have?

[Maithanet]

They released a picture of the contested ballot in VA delegate race, and it really is far more ambiguous that I'd initially imagined.

It doesn't look definitive at all.  If you look at the voter's choice for governor, you see Gilispee with a shading + linethrough, and there's no question there.  Are they saying that if the box for Northam was also shaded, that would be a clear vote for Northam, and that Gilispee was chosen in error? 

I feel like the Republicans really pulled a fast on here.  Very disappointing. 

[OldGimletEye]

More Republican Party trash talk, because that's what it does. 

The Republican Party is a real legend in its own mind.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-stock-market-trump-world-invites-the-wrong-comparison

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Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told CNBC’s John Harwood last week that recent stock market growth was one of the reasons he supports the Republican tax plan. Referring to Wall Street’s hot streak, the Oklahoma congressman said, “I didn’t see anything like that in the Obama years.”

Perhaps that’s because Cole wasn’t paying close enough attention during Barack Obama’s presidency. As Harwood explained in his piece, the Dow Jones Industrial Average “more than doubled under President Obama, and had risen more in percentage terms by this point in Obama’s first year than in Trump’s.”

And yet, Republicans keep picking this fight, convinced that it offers proof of … something. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders argued this week that the bull market is proof of the “amazing” results that occur “when you put a businessman instead of a liberal politician in the White House.”

Even aside from the fact that the stock market did just as well or better, under Obama as it’s doing under the Trumpster, why can’t we just acknowledge there are a better set of metrics to gauge how things are going than the stock market? Ones that are more relevant to most people.

And then of course, the high stock valuations are not a sign of things going that well.

Why are Republicans so fucking stupid?

[Fez]

14 hours ago, Nasty LongRider said:

I checked Collin's twitter feed and no comments made today, perhaps she is in hiding.   hmmmmm

Or she drew the short straw and was some sort of GOP senate caucus designated survivor (I don't know if that's actually a thing though).

Burr was also not at the White House, but he released a statement, as he has each time there's been a senate event at the White House, that he feels it's not appropriate for him to visit while the Senate's Russia/Election investigation is ongoing.

 

52 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

They released a picture of the contested ballot in VA delegate race, and it really is far more ambiguous that I'd initially imagined.

It doesn't look definitive at all.  If you look at the voter's choice for governor, you see Gilispee with a shading + linethrough, and there's no question there.  Are they saying that if the box for Northam was also shaded, that would be a clear vote for Northam, and that Gilispee was chosen in error? 

I feel like the Republicans really pulled a fast on here.  Very disappointing. 

Yeah, I hadn't heard before about the Gillispee vote looking like that; that changes things quite a bit.

[DMC]

46 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Meaningless might have been the wrong choice of words, but they can be misleading. You know people have different feelings about Congress as a whole and their own representative. This polling is more favorable to Democrats than I’ve seen in the past, but I have seen generic polls previously that had Dems with a solid lead only for very little to change as far as the total seat count goes. Pointing that out is not hand waving. It’s healthy skepticism.

My point is the the congressional ballot is highly predictive:

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Once you control for which party is in the White House, the generic ballot about 18 months before a midterm election is strongly correlated (+.78) with the eventual House result — i.e., the share of votes cast for the president’s party versus the share of votes cast for the opposition party. [...]

As we approach the 2018 midterms, expect the generic ballot to become even more predictive. For the 18 midterm elections that have taken place since 1946, I compared the final generic-ballot polling of the cycle by Gallup or the final polling average from RealClearPolitics⁴ with the results of the national House vote and found that the final polling missed by an average of only 2 percentage points. That’s about as accurate as the final national presidential polls before a presidential election. 

A double digit lead in the ballot, as we've seen recently, would strongly suggest the Dems will attain the high-single digit victory we know they will need to take back the House.  Fenno's paradox is instructive to keep in mind when looking at individual races, but it doesn't have much relationship to explaining well-founded, consistent aggregate indicators of election results.  Rather, it explains why Congress as a whole has had a < 20 percent approval for at least a decade now and incumbents aren't swept out every two years.  Of course healthy skepticism is always useful, but there is absolutely no reason to be particularly skeptical of the generic ballot. 

55 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Plus, there’s one thing I’ve yet to see discussed on this forum. There’s going to be a giant increase in fund raising for Republican candidates this cycle because of the tax legislation. What effect do you think that’s going to have?

Yes, I've mentioned multiple times the tax bill will help pry open the wallets of big donors and that will help stem the tide of the Dems' fundraising advantage.  One would expect that will largely be made up in soft money, and it will mostly be directed to defending incumbents, one way or another.

[Sivin]

13 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

On the radio today there was speculation that Corker may be eyeing SOS now that Tillerson's days may be numbered. I figured there had to be another reason he went with this tax bill after saying he wouldnt.

Personal gain isn't enough?

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Mudguard

I understand that, but typically the market reacts to the passage of major pieces of legislation, even if it’s already been priced in. And considering this legislation was a monster giveaway to Wall St., it seems odd that the market dipped after it passed.

I had been under the impression that, somewhat surprisingly, the bill would actually hurt the Wall Street types (the ones who put in the long hours to steal money) and pass the savings on to the already wealthy (the ones who we all think we'll be one day) 

[Week]

The United States' standing in the world continues to improve thanks to Trump's strong, reasonable, and reliable leadership on the world stage. Nobody here laughing at us.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/12/21/16802604/un-jerusalem-trump-israel-haley

A few stalwart allies voted against the resolution -- voting in support of the US -- who were:

1. Guatemala
2. Honduras
3. Israel
4. Marshall Islands
5. Micronesia
6. Nauru
7. Palau
8. Togo
9. United States

/smh

[Fez]

3 minutes ago, Week said:

The United States' standing in the world continues to improve thanks to Trump's strong, reasonable, and reliable leadership on the world stage. Nobody here laughing at us.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/12/21/16802604/un-jerusalem-trump-israel-haley

A few stalwart allies voted against the resolution -- voting in support of the US -- who were:

1. Guatemala
2. Honduras
3. Israel
4. Marshall Islands
5. Micronesia
6. Nauru
7. Palau
8. Togo
9. United States

/smh

Apparently Canada was planning on voting against the resolution too. But after Trump and Nikki Haley's comments they decided they would look too much like a US puppet, so they abstained instead.

One of the lesser commented upon, but bigger flaws, of this White House is its completely misunderstanding of how often direct threats just backfire.

[Sivin]

8 minutes ago, Week said:

The United States' standing in the world continues to improve thanks to Trump's strong, reasonable, and reliable leadership on the world stage. Nobody here laughing at us.

https://www.vox.com/world/2017/12/21/16802604/un-jerusalem-trump-israel-haley

A few stalwart allies voted against the resolution -- voting in support of the US -- who were:

1. Guatemala
2. Honduras
3. Israel
4. Marshall Islands
5. Micronesia
6. Nauru
7. Palau
8. Togo
9. United States

/smh

At first when I saw Guatemala I thought this would be a list composed of pretty impotent allies, but by the time I got done I realized that I hadn't known half of those countries existed.

[Lykos]

8 minutes ago, Week said:

1. Guatemala

Figures.

[Zorral]

11 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

One does have to wonder how the Republican congress-people plan on avoiding being lynched - possibly literally - when they head home for the recess.  Especially when the mobs visit them at home.

Private armies, private planes, secret police as like the Stasi, cutting everyone out of the internet, etc. via the end of net neutrality as like China, and much much else, already in place or in play, and all paid for by tax dollars.

All along, since the days of Nixon when the take-over strategies were getting going, the rethugs and those who buy them, have out$pent and bribed and lied beyond anything the complacent and smug Dems and liberals would even consider doing, such as funding think tanks, publications, programs and schools in universities, and the rest.

[Which Tyler]

56 minutes ago, Fez said:

Apparently Canada was planning on voting against the resolution too. But after Trump and Nikki Haley's comments they decided they would look too much like a US puppet, so they abstained instead.

One of the lesser commented upon, but bigger flaws, of this White House is its completely misunderstanding of how often direct threats just backfire.

Apparently the same goes for Australia...