US Politics: Four Days and Counting

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

What makes me say that is tons of research on executive orders, including my own efforts.  You're right Trump is an outlier.  But the personality of the president does not matter.  It's an institutional constraint.  The majority party in Congress is given more deference by the courts than the minority party, and will consider recommendations thusly.  Whatever is sitting in the Oval really doesn't matter.  There's a broad canvas of personalities since Truman, but each and every one of them lowered their EO tendencies - as a policymaking tool - during divided government. 

I get there is a ton of research on the subject. My point is does it still matter? I know as someone who is seeking a PhD that you would likely reject that, but Trump is such a statistical outlier that it has to be something to consider. If I introduce 10 relatively similar variables to the same conditions, I would expect roughly similar results between them, and I would expect the same if I introduced an 11^th similar variable. But if that 11^th variable is completely different in every way, shape and form, I should not assume that it will behave similarly when presented with the same conditions. Furthermore, reliance on institutional constrains may be a mistake if the new variable does not respect or abide by them. I’m not saying that you are wrong, just that you shouldn’t be so certain that you’re right. It’s quite possible that Trump won’t deviate from the norm, but it’s also possible that he may, and that’s something I don’t think you can say about any other modern president.

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I can’t imagine a Western democracy where polls close at 6:00 pm. It’s almost like they’re trying to discourage working people from voting.

Is there a western democracy other than the USA that holds elections on a week day? All of our elections, at least since I've been aware of when elections were held (which means from when I was 5, because my dad was an MP then) have been held on a Saturday, and I'm pretty sure for all or most of last century. Back then of course to work on a Saturday was pretty rare, since few businesses operated on Saturdays. These days, it's very common for people to work on Saturdays, but it's still easier for the vast majority of people to vote on a Saturday than during the week.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

58 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Get back to the desk, Suzi. Let the professionals do the diagonsary.

This motherfucker crazay.

Of the two of us, I’m the one with the psychology degree, Nurse Jacelyn.  

[SweetPea]

As an outside observer, holding elections on a week day and not making it a holiday seems strange and stupid to me.

[A True Kaniggit]

The middle school I voted at was dead. I was in and out in less than 5 minutes. Then again, there's not a single competitive race on the ballot down here.

Also ran into a little bit of hostility from one of the volunteers there. Apparently she didn't like that I didn't know which of the 3 tables I needed to go to and she actually had to answer a question. (I've always voted by mail before now). Sorry I don't have the ability to know things without having actually learned them first.

[David Selig]

27 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Is there a western democracy other than the USA that holds elections on a week day?

Great Britain. It's traditionally on Thursday there IIRC. 

[williamjm]

4 minutes ago, David Selig said:

Great Britain. It's traditionally on Thursday there IIRC. 

I'm not sure if there's any law that says it has to be on a Thursday, but it always has been for as long as I can remember. Polls stay open to 10pm.

I think there have been suggestions about moving it to the weekend to try to increase turnout, although I could also get behind the suggestion of making it a holiday.

[Mexal]

Pizza to the Polls is amazing. They deserve so much credit for what they do on election day.

[DMC]

53 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I get there is a ton of research on the subject. My point is does it still matter?

Ok, to explain what institutional constraint means:  no matter the president, she is likely to be confronted with more court challenges - and more EOs struck down - under divided government than under unified government.  What Trump does with that, I don't know.  Because again you're right, he is an outlier.  So, yeah, he may confront the judiciary as an endgame.  But that not related to the constancy of the institutional constraint.  I hope that made sense, but I felt like it didn't. 

Anyway, thus far he's shown no inclination to directly attack the courts, even though he had ample opportunity to with the travel ban.  Instead, he allowed the conservative justices to basically spell out how such an order would be palatable to them, and proceeded accordingly.  If you're not going to defy the courts when you're a president under unified government, it'd be very stupid to then try it under divided government.  At least with UG, you have the threat of congress.  Constitutionally, congress could make the entire federal judiciary one judge.  Granted, it'd be really hard to tie that to reconciliation, but these days who knows.

[The Anti-Targ]

So, the older the democracy the more likely it is that election day will be a day that is disenfranchising for the working class. What a surprise.

[Martell Spy]

Huge turnout here in Washington state.

It's a tossup U.S. house seat, but I think Kim Shrier will take the 8th. I already leaned that way, as even though it has been a Republican seat, the area demographics have been changing. Dino Rossi has been running a really terrible radio ad though a while now, and I think it will harm his chances. And it's not run by an outside group, but his campaign. It calls Dr. Kim "Dr. Tax", and blames her for nearly every tax in existence, including local taxes. And it's read by what sounds like Millennial Saul Goodman. Really irritating voice. I really don't see how this will convince anyone that is not a Republican, but maybe the goal is to juice turnout of R's. 

An outside group was running a pretty effective anti-Rossi ad for a while, so perhaps that caused the Rossi campaign to go negative. Before that both campaigns were running positive messages about their own candidate. 

Been seeing a lot of activity among Shrier supporters, too, including lots of door posters. More energy than usual in this race.

 

[Martell Spy]

Dems take 35 House seats, Arizona and Nevada Senate seats, and lose North Dakota, R's end up +1 in the Senate.

[DanteGabriel]

36 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

As an outside observer, holding elections on a week day and not making it a holiday seems strange and stupid to me.

It's probably because CERTAIN MINORITY POPULATIONS are not as good at voting, eh?

[DMC]

22 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So, the older the democracy the more likely it is that election day will be a day that is disenfranchising for the working class. What a surprise.

All I get from this is you're jealous our democracy is older  

[James Arryn]

2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

And that’s Nebraska, there are so many well armed potential white male terrorists walking around, and you let them into schools!

The more people with guns in schools, the safer the students, duh. 

[DMC]

From 538's live coverage:

Quote

JANIE VELENCIA

6:10 PM

With the continued caveat that all of this might change, here’s some more early exit poll data:

44 percent of voters approve of Trump, and 55 percent disapprove of him.

41 percent support impeaching Trump, while 55 percent oppose that.

More voters want to see Democrats in control of the house than Republicans (53 percent to 43 percent).

Views of the Democratic party (50 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable) are better than that of the Republican party (43 percent favorable and 54 percent unfavorable).

So, basically that exit says the generic ballot is Dem +10.  That's good.

[KingintheNorth4]

I'll be honest, when Bernie didn't win the Democratic nomination for president, I'd had somewhat lost hope in the process. But leading up to the midterms, I realize that politics is always fluid, never truly stagnant. Despite all the tweets and Facebook posts I read saying voting doesn't matter, we're always going to get out what we put in, and the change we want must come from the bottom up.

That is why I'm voting today.

[James Arryn]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

From 538's live coverage:

So, basically that exit says the generic ballot is Dem +10.  That's good.

52% of Americans either agree with Trump’s stance/actions on immigration, or feel he’s not being strong enough.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

52% of Americans either agree with Trump’s stance/actions on immigration, or feel he’s not being strong enough.

Where you see that?  Hit me up.

[James Arryn]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Where you see that?  Hit me up.

CBSN.