US Politics: March Madness

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Some days I think he would, however, cheerfully invade Canada.

He probably would, so long as he wouldn't have to partake in any of fightin'. He'd probably pull a Ted Nugent and crap his pants and then blame liberals.

It's hard to think of people that make me see red more than that sorry ass chicken hawk clown.

[LongRider]

2 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

He probably would, so long as he wouldn't have to partake in any of fightin'. He'd probably pull a Ted Nugent and crap his pants and then blame liberals.

It's hard to think of people that make me see red more than that sorry ass chicken hawk clown.

Unlike Beau Biden, his son's won't put on a uniform either.  

[GAROVORKIN]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

The one upside of Bolton is that he'll probably prevent Trump from starting any accidental wars; of course, he'll probably also get him to start several intentional ones.

So we will invade Iran, but probably not, say, Australia.

Ot he'll replace Bolton after 1 month. 

[Shryke]

54 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Some days I think he would, however, cheerfully invade Canada.

I've still got Canada or Mexico as the crazy outside chance in the betting pool.

Best bets are on North Korea with Iran as the dark horse with the better return.

[Shryke]

19 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Unlike Beau Biden, his son's won't put on a uniform either.  

If he wants his sons to suit up and join the fight, he'll have to invade an african wildlife sanctuary.

[LongRider]

13 minutes ago, Shryke said:

If he wants his sons to suit up and join the fight, he'll have to invade an african wildlife sanctuary.

Great idea, would make for inspiring PR videos on YouTube. 

[A True Kaniggit]

Invade Canada? Only if they stop sending me the annual tribute.

[Fragile Bird]

43 minutes ago, Shryke said:

If he wants his sons to suit up and join the fight, he'll have to invade an african wildlife sanctuary.

[Bonnot OG]

2 hours ago, LongRider said:

Someone is still crying bitter tears.   Hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha!   ahem, sorry.

 

I honestly hope she drops dead of a heart attack from the stressing out she is doing over this, the whiny fucking spoiled of bigoted shit that she is.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh Jesus on a Pogo Stick Christ, my hatred for Coulter is just...beyond any measurable quantity.

[LongRider]

12 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

I honestly hope she drops dead of a heart attack from the stressing out she is doing over this, the whiny fucking spoiled of bigoted shit that she is.

 

4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Oh Jesus on a Pogo Stick Christ, my hatred for Coulter is just...beyond any measurable quantity.

I know I know, but her whiny tweets are just so fuckin' hilarious!   Boo f'n hoo Coulter, it's your pity party and you'll tweet if you want to, and I'll laff and laff.

[Fragile Bird]

OMG bloody Republicans on Don Lemon's show, one black lady talking about students demanding the end of the 2nd amendment and a white guy then saying "assault weapon ban? By definition all guns are assault weapons". Fucking fuckers.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

There's some depressing analysis here on just how hard it's going to be for the Dems to re-take the House due to gerrymandering.  

I am sceptical. All the previous commentary I have seen suggests the Democrats need about a 6-7% win to have an even chance of flipping the house (itself an outrageous situation, but nowhere near 11%).

[Yukle]

2 hours ago, Triskele said:

There's some depressing analysis here on just how hard it's going to be for the Dems to re-take the House due to gerrymandering.  

 

18 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I am sceptical. All the previous commentary I have seen suggests the Democrats need about a 6-7% win to have an even chance of flipping the house (itself an outrageous situation, but nowhere near 11%).

For some unknown reason Americans are in the habit of downplaying the role that gerrymandering plays in destroying elections. They'll point out - correctly - that other factors like urban packing are at play. BUT Mother Jones has it right: the boundaries are nearly impossible to overcome. Keep in mind that a 7-8% lead is not uniform. For instance, if the Dems gain an average of +10 in California, they probably only gained +2 in Texas. And even when that happens, a 2% swing means nothing.

In Australia, about a third of the house is, at any time, within a 5% margin. That sort of swing is pretty common because of our preferential voting, which makes it harder to determine voting intentions from polling alone. Also swing voters don't all flow in the same direction but to different parties.

Gerrymandering is so bad in the USA that most seats aren't even worth contesting if you're the opposition party. It'd required overcoming absolutely outrageous 20% margins. Those ought to be rare - 5% or less of your house should be that safe.

Mother Jones looks accurate, and it is consistent with 538, who also state that the Dems probably need a minimum of 8 and somewhere as much as 13 lead to overcome how bad the map is for them.

[The Marquis de Leech]

26 minutes ago, Yukle said:

 

For some unknown reason Americans are in the habit of downplaying the role that gerrymandering plays in destroying elections. They'll point out - correctly - that other factors like urban packing are at play. BUT Mother Jones has it right: the boundaries are nearly impossible to overcome. Keep in mind that a 7-8% lead is not uniform. For instance, if the Dems gain an average of +10 in California, they probably only gained +2 in Texas. And even when that happens, a 2% swing means nothing.

California's House races in 2016 were won by Democrats by a 39-14 seat margin. A massacre of California's Republican delegation in 2018 would actually get the Democrats a long way to regaining the House.

[ThinkerX]

I can just see Trump trying to use this law to squelch his political foes come election time:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/03/22/five-things-know-john-bolton/451417002/

 

As the midterm congressional elections unfold, candidates are also running in 36 states for governor and competing for more than 6,000 state legislative seats. How many of these state candidates do you think will say something good or bad about President Trump? Probably more than you can count. When they do, they will break an obscure federal law.

It's yet another example of the crazy and complex federal campaign finance laws. Worse, it shows how the federal government has unconstitutionally inserted itself into state governance.

[OldGimletEye]

Juxtapose what the student marchers are asking for:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/26/the-courts-say-the-parkland-kids-agenda-is-largely-compatible-with-the-second-amendment/

Quote

The student organizers of the March for Our Lives have released a five-point policy agenda that they say will reduce the toll of gun violence in the United States.

While many gun-control opponents have attempted to frame the march as an “attack” on the Second Amendment, the organizers'’ policy agenda is striking most of all for the modesty of its scope — just five items, consisting mostly of policies that federal courts have ruled to be wholly compatible with the Second Amendment.

 

With conservative clown whining:

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/26/17163680/fox-news-gun-march-for-our-lives-data

Quote

The night before the March for Our Lives, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson argued that we shouldn’t be listening to the logic of teenage gun control activists who organized the march. Then he vocalized the exact anxiety of gun rights groups:

Journalists agree with Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, so they’ve slapped them on the cover of Time magazine and declared that they’re heroes and you’re not allowed to disagree with them.

Poor conservatives! They're being oppressed! They are just a small band of rebels fighting the intergalactic liberal empire!

Conservative opinions must be heard! Stop the oppression!

[Fez]

7 hours ago, Yukle said:

 

For some unknown reason Americans are in the habit of downplaying the role that gerrymandering plays in destroying elections. They'll point out - correctly - that other factors like urban packing are at play. BUT Mother Jones has it right: the boundaries are nearly impossible to overcome. Keep in mind that a 7-8% lead is not uniform. For instance, if the Dems gain an average of +10 in California, they probably only gained +2 in Texas. And even when that happens, a 2% swing means nothing.

Thing is, empirically we don't know for sure this'll happen. There are analysts who think it'll happen, but as I've pointed out before, those models all rely on a uniform swing; because there's not enough polling of individual House races to get a better sense of things. If Democrats win basically all the sets they have now and pick-up something like the following: ~7 from CA, ~4 from PA, ~2 from NY, 2~ from NJ, and 1 from NV they are almost at a majority and haven't even encountered a GOP gerrymander. Then, despite the gerrymander, there are enough easy pick-ups in VA, FL, and TX to get the majority and not even deal with the gerrymanders in OH, MO, GA, MI, WI, etc (and they are likely to pick-up a few seats in those states anyway).

In the past 12 elections, Democrats have won the House vote only three times: 2006, 2008, and 2012. And in two out of those three times, Democrats had a House majority after the election (and remember, people talk about the 2010 gerrymander, but there are a lot of states that were already gerrymandered from 2000). The one exception was the 2012 election, where they won the House vote by 1.4% (Less than Obama's 3.9% win) but only ended up with 201 seats (their high-water mark of the past 8 years). The 17th lowest margin of victory by a Republican was 6.1%, which added to 1.4% is 7.5% and is the reason analysts say Democrats need a 7-8% overall margin to win the House. 

But there are three major problems there: 1) There were many districts where Democrats didn't compete nearly as hard as they could've, and they are this time; 2) There are many districts where voter preferences have changed since 2012 (e.g. Frank Wolf won VA-10 by 19% in 2012, Barbara Comstock sure as hell isn't managing that this year); 3) Incumbency is still important, and Republicans have a lot of open districts to defend this year.

Basically, we have this single example of a Republican gerrymander (and it wasn't just the gerrymander) blocking a Democratic majority, and some people have decided that this is the end. And the examples cited from state elections, like the VA house of delegates last year, aren't convincing either. Yes Democrats won the vote but ended up with 49 and out 100 seats; however, numerous Democrats ran unopposed and therefore racked up margins they otherwise wouldn't have had. Which also partially happened in 2012; there were 29 races where a candidate won at least 85% of the vote, meaning they were essentially unopposed; 12 were Republican and 17 were Democratic, meaning Democrats had more margins to rack up votes. And these aren't gerrymandered vote sinks, they were mostly in CA, NY, MA, and NJ. If Republicans had ran candidates in these races who could even get to 30% (which is reasonable almost anywhere), that alone would've wiped out that 1.4% margin of victory with no change in seat composition.

[DanteGabriel]

Here's a nice note about Trump's legal toxicity from a Talking Points Memo reader:

Quote

Most firms now have at least a few powerful female partners and they ALL have 50 percent young women as associates. Of course many of the men despise Trump too, but it is the women who are saying you represent this fucking pig and I will quit tomorrow and everyone knows they mean it. And any firm that represented Trump may as well just give up on attracting female associates. It would become their entire brand overnight, and it is a terrible black mark. The top firms are interchangeable, so it doesn’t take much to drop to the bottom of young associates’ list. Yes, the fact that he won’t pay, will fucking lose spectacularly and along the way will inevitably force his lawyer to choose between suborning perjury and quitting (if he can), but the truth is it’s the Trump brand they just can’t afford. He’s a Swastika.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-the-president-has-no-personal-attorney

Just like administration jobs, respectable, competent people don't want anything to do with this shithole President. 

[Maithanet]

33 minutes ago, Fez said:

Basically, we have this single example of a Republican gerrymander (and it wasn't just the gerrymander) blocking a Democratic majority, and some people have decided that this is the end. And the examples cited from state elections, like the VA house of delegates last year, aren't convincing either. Yes Democrats won the vote but ended up with 49 and out 100 seats; however, numerous Democrats ran unopposed and therefore racked up margins they otherwise wouldn't have had. Which also partially happened in 2012; there were 29 races where a candidate won at least 85% of the vote, meaning they were essentially unopposed; 12 were Republican and 17 were Democratic, meaning Democrats had more margins to rack up votes. And these aren't gerrymandered vote sinks, they were mostly in CA, NY, MA, and NJ. If Republicans had ran candidates in these races who could even get to 30% (which is reasonable almost anywhere), that alone would've wiped out that 1.4% margin of victory with no change in seat composition.

This is a good point.  For some reason Democrats are naturally inclined to oscillate between defeatism (we'd need +14% to take the house!) and overconfidence (blue tsunami!)  I think that neither is warranted.  Yes, gerrymandering and population sorting gives Republicans an advantage in the House.  But looking at individual races, there are definitely enough winnable districts to see that taking the House is totally possible.  To take the House, Democrats need to win in places like VA-10 (DC suburb, voted for Clinton +9 in 2016, but with a strong incumbent), PA-17 (Lamb vs Rothfuss, a much more swingy district than the old PA-18 that Lamb just won, but Rothfuss is a stronger opponent) and MI-11 (Trump and Romney both won +5 here, but there's no incumbent).

Those districts are winnable, there's no way you'll convince me otherwise.  This election is going to swing on whether democrats can successfully defeat INCUMBENTS in vulnerable districts.  Fortunately, there's 11 Republican House seats in swingy districts with no incumbent in 2018, so Democrats only have to unseat something like 12-15 current officeholders to take the majority.