US Politics: Red, Red Whine

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

I really wish I could find my old post from many, many months ago suggesting that Beto was the best candidate because that's popping up everywhere now.  Reminds me of my Aaron Rodgers prediction not that I'm a guy who thinks about or remembers these things.  

Don't worry Trisk, I remember.  You also once claimed I was "the Roy Jones Jr of the board, post for post the best that ever was" and I won't let you forget that either.

[Bonnot OG]

51 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Wtf I thought they were going talk to Swetnick.  This is a political hit job.

Mitch McConnell just filed cloture, which starts the clock on the confirmation vote, and senators haven’t, as of now, even seen the FBI report.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Ultimately, democrats aren’t going to be inspired by the three angry old boomers or a Clinton Clone, or Diet Obama. Or any of the dozens of white milquetoast governors or senators. 

But Beto probably would inspire them. And that’s the thing that all the Kerry-Dukakis-types who are running all seriously lack.

I don't know enough of all the various candidates to have an opinion on who will be strong in the primary race and who won't, but I very much agree that the Dems need a leader that gives people something to vote - a safe pick will just wind up losing in the general even if they have an easy time in the primary.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Martell Spy said:

Why Amazon Raised Its Minimum Wage

It wasn't out of the goodness of Jeff Bezos's heart.

https://newrepublic.com/article/151521/amazon-raised-minimum-wage

 

This excerpt pretty much has the right of it so without going to the rest of the article I think I'd largely agree with most of what it would say.

People really need to stop being so gullible as to believe corporations do anything which has not been run though a filter of "is this good for the bottom line? If yes then do it, if no then don't do it." The only difference between a smart corporation and a stupid one is that a smart corporation takes a lot more (and a longer time scale) into account as affecting or risking the bottom line, and is more likely to appear to be acting socially responsible as a result. And of course smart corporations know that a veneer of social responsibility goes in the positive column for the bottom line, because they know that people want to feel like they are buying products and services from one of the good guys.

[Bonnot OG]

I really wish people would stop thinking things will just continue as normal. Once Kavanaugh is a Justice, our democracy finally dies. Republicans have already laid the ground work to challenge Novembers' election results. And even if Dems win, they won't have a chance to do anything with a hard right supreme court and stacked lower court protecting them.

[DMC]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think she's got too much connection with Clinton. It'll cost her with Dems who are cautious about it, and one of the other runners will hammer her about it. 

She's been pretty good, or politically expedient, about disavowing Bill.  I don't anticipate her Clinton connection being a problem.  In fact, I'd say the bigger problem would be how she expedited herself from any Clinton association.

3 hours ago, lokisnow said:

I’d draft Hickenlooper and Booker, I think it’s going to be a man and I think Booker has the best laid track.  I think Hickenlooper has the best chance of beating Trump only because Trump will want to call him Hick which won’t play well with his own base.  

I disagree about it being a man.  They need to veer in to that ice and exploit the gender gap.

3 hours ago, lokisnow said:

but if Beto wins the senate seat then we all know it is fait accompli he will win the 2020 nomination,

Thank you.  What this started from was 538's chat, and all of them were saying Beto will only run if he loses.  Um, no, if he wins a statewide office in Texas, then he's a force to be reckoned with.  And in terms of this exercise a pretty solid pick.  If he loses, no one's gonna give a shit about him.

2 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Tom Wolf, PA.  I don't think he's presidential material, personally, although he's doing okay for the state. He's up against a Republican majority in the General Assembly that thinks we still live in the 18th century.

No, Wolf is not presidential material.  I live in Pittsburgh.  But he's gonna win.  Casey is gonna win.  My rep, Doyle, is gonna win.  Which is why I'm still voting absentee for Florida.

[karaddin]

24 minutes ago, DMC said:

I disagree about it being a man.  They need to veer in to that ice and exploit the gender gap.

I really hope the majority of white women can be convinced that they need to consider more than just protecting their racial dominance if they go this route, because I'm not feeling super confident its going to happen right now.

23 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

As much as I hate to be this paranoid I have worries about this.  Fuck, when I saw that "China is meddling on behalf of Dems." 

The Kavanaugh situation is particularly worrisome not because of how it represents the GOP getting another seat with a jurist likely to the right of Kennedy (virtually assured from the moment Trump won), but because they appear to have chose Kavanaugh specifically because of his pro-executive views.  Now that we're down this road and he's enraged the stakes are even higher.  If some 11th hour evidence emerged that Kavanaugh was completely innocent (will never happen, he's a liar) I would still be willing to fight this one tooth-and-nail because for the aforementioned reasons this one is worse than just Trump getting another conservative justice.  

Fuck it doesn't even need to be China, if Putin's primary goal in all this is to destabilise the US the most obvious play is to meddle in the election/outright hack voting machines in favour of the Dems in seats they're likely to win anyway and do it in a way that gets caught. It seems such an obvious play I can't believe it won't be tried and then suddenly all the GOP will be up in arms and it gives the justification to ignore the election result if he wants to make that play.

On the second part even @Ser Scot A Ellison agreed that the possibility of a SCOTUS pick that was personally indebted to Trump in a real and concrete way was a scary prospect when the seat became available. The way they're fighting it out to get specifically BK in that seat really fits with him being thoroughly compromised, not just partisan. He may simply be owned by the GOP as a whole though, not Trump personally.

[DMC]

26 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I really hope the majority of white women can be convinced that they need to consider more than just protecting their racial dominance if they go this route, because I'm not feeling super confident its going to happen right now.

I don't like blaming any women as a demographic for Trump.  They voted in almost the exact same way as Romney in 2012.  This is on white males.  And the dumb kids that voted third party.  Also, to reiterate, the gender gap isn't about women v. men.  It's about how Democratic single women have become.  And how many - constantly increasing - single women there are.  And, yes, they kickass as nonwhites.

[karaddin]

Just now, DMC said:

I don't like blaming any women as a demographic for Trump.  They voted in almost the exact same way as Romney in 2012.  This is on white males.  And the dumb kids that voted third party.  Also, to reiterate, the gender gap isn't about women v. men.  It's about how Democratic single women have become.  And how many - constantly increasing - single women there are.  And, yes, they kickass as nonwhites.

I guess where I'm coming at it from is that I've given up on the white men that voted for Trump, I don't think they are going to change and they're certainly not going to be swayed by what I thought you were suggesting - which I was misunderstanding so thanks for the explanation there. As to the bolded - I get that, and I think its the best stance for men to take but I think white women are the ones that need to do the work of swaying other white women, part of which requires acknowledging what happened. The turnout issue is one I'm really not used to dealing with thanks to the electoral system here though and its a complicated one given attempts at disenfranchisement in its various forms.

For all I disagree with you a lot in this thread (as opposed to Westworld where we were often on the same page!) I hope you're right about most of this stuff. I just don't have much of that hope left.

[Bonnot OG]

Shocking that the FBI, who as restricted by the White House and also ran by a Trump sycophant, didn't find anything into the White House's pick. It's like a police department investigating itself for wrong doings. Of course they're not gonna let the dirt be exposed.

Sham investigation was a sham, like we all knew it was. No spineless shits like Flake can feel a bit better about voting for a scumbag. 

[Bonnot OG]

A statement issued by the White House around 2:30 a.m. ET said the FBI had completed its work. “With this additional information, the White House is fully confident the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

[Ran]

It's remarkable how little an investigation can turn up when you control who the investigators can speak to and what they can speak about.

[Bonnot OG]

18 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's remarkable how little an investigation can turn up when you control who the investigators can speak to and what they can speak about.

Look at what this fucking walking corpse just admitted. 
 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, karaddin said:

I really hope the majority of white women can be convinced that they need to consider more than just protecting their racial dominance if they go this route, because I'm not feeling super confident its going to happen right now.

Fuck it doesn't even need to be China, if Putin's primary goal in all this is to destabilise the US the most obvious play is to meddle in the election/outright hack voting machines in favour of the Dems in seats they're likely to win anyway and do it in a way that gets caught. It seems such an obvious play I can't believe it won't be tried and then suddenly all the GOP will be up in arms and it gives the justification to ignore the election result if he wants to make that play.

On the second part even @Ser Scot A Ellison agreed that the possibility of a SCOTUS pick that was personally indebted to Trump in a real and concrete way was a scary prospect when the seat became available. The way they're fighting it out to get specifically BK in that seat really fits with him being thoroughly compromised, not just partisan. He may simply be owned by the GOP as a whole though, not Trump personally.

Indeed.  The prospect of a Supreme Court made up of people personally loyal and indebted to Trump in some way is incredibly disturbing.

[Larry of the Lawn]

If you're Jeff Flake, how do you not take this investigation and how it's being made available to the Senate as a simultaneous slap in the face and a kick in the balls?  He needs to be like "Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump, don't piss on my neck and tell me it's raining"

[Morpheus]

47 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

If you're Jeff Flake, how do you not take this investigation and how it's being made available to the Senate as a simultaneous slap in the face and a kick in the balls?  He needs to be like "Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump, don't piss on my neck and tell me it's raining"

He never cared about a legit investigation, he just wants an excuse to do what he was always going to do where he cans say did everything by the book even if the process was tainted.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 hours ago, Ormond said:

I am no expert, but why are none of the other sitting Dem governors presidential material? 

I have a bit of a dark horse fantasy about Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana. He's been elected twice in a "red" state while being pro-choice and having had some leadership in opposition to the "Citizens United" ruling. Right after the last election I found him as a possibility just by looking through the list of Democratic officeholders. I really think we are past the time when a candidate has to be from a big population state to win -- at least after we've had Cheney, Palin, and Biden as Vice Presidential candidates (two of them actual VPs) the last few decades, all from states with only 3 electoral votes, like Montana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bullock_(American_politician)

I think you found a diamond in the rough (ruff?). He’s won statewide three times, and possibly more interesting, he’s the chairman of the National Governors Association, which gives him tentacles in all 50 states. It also looks like he’s campaigning for people in key primary states.

It’s a long ways out, but I may owe you a Coke one day.

[aceluby]

8 hours ago, DMC said:

I don't like blaming any women as a demographic for Trump.  They voted in almost the exact same way as Romney in 2012.  This is on white males.  And the dumb kids that voted third party.  Also, to reiterate, the gender gap isn't about women v. men.  It's about how Democratic single women have become.  And how many - constantly increasing - single women there are.  And, yes, they kickass as nonwhites.

My feed is full of those third party voters who still 'both sides' everything, stating Republicans are just as bad as Democrats.  It takes all my willpower to not just scream ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?  What is happening now is NOTHING like anything any Democrat has ever done in my or your lifetime.  Its bullshit laziness from morons who are ignorant and yet act like they are so above the fray that they just look down on you for pointing out how ignorant their position is.  Fucking frustrating.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, DMC said:

I don't like blaming any women as a demographic for Trump.  They voted in almost the exact same way as Romney in 2012.  This is on white males.  And the dumb kids that voted third party.  Also, to reiterate, the gender gap isn't about women v. men.  It's about how Democratic single women have become.  And how many - constantly increasing - single women there are.  And, yes, they kickass as nonwhites.

Not women. WHITE women. And a majority of them voted for a man that bragged that he could sexually assault them.

They have to own that.  

[Fragile Bird]

15 minutes ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

Not women. WHITE women. And a majority of them voted for a man that bragged that he could sexually assault them.

They have to own that.  

Lots of them do own it. They stand there with signs or wear t-shirts inviting him to come grab them.

Of course, every single woman I've seen in those circumstances was not a woman that Trump would have been interested in (from what I've seen) so it is very weird.