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US Politics: Paradise Lost


Fragile Bird

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The title refers to many things, but an important reference is to the town of Paradise, California, wiped out by fire. ETA I really was moved by the tragic fire, and jumped at the chance to do this title.

One of the others is about being cast out of Congress...

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2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The title refers to many things, but an important one refers to the town of Paradise, California, wiped out by fire.

One of the others is about being cast out of Congress...

Alien: Covenant was supposed to be a direct sequel to Prometheus but the backlash caused the studio and Ridley Scott to abandon the film they intended to make called Prometheus: Paradise Lost.

Instead they did a co-opted reboot still relying heavily on the biblical allegory in the aforementioned completed Alien:Covenant.

They used the bible for the idea because the bible is god and then the libtards made them not do that no more but they made movie and got them back with subtle acknowledgements to conservatives like Evil Android Bennedict Cumberbatch having an early Alien specimen displayed in a crucifix like position.

And the nail! The nail! The nail of the lord!

Stop the recount! Save Florida!

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Boom goes the cannon watch the blood and the shit spray.

Democrats just flipped jeff Denham’s California district:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-midterm-election-day-updates-hold-ca-10-denham-harder-1541137532-htmlstory.html

and democrat Katie porter is now 261 votes ahead Mimi Walters in ca house district 45, so possibly it will flip too.

i think that just leaves republican young Kim in CD 39 hanging on to her lead which is down to 711 votes

and in my state assembly district, democrat christy smith finally has a lead over the republican incumbent, woo! We probably flipped it!

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1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

What was the sex scandal thing at the end of the last thread? Did I miss something in the super fast pace that the US Pol thread moves these days?

Melania is out of the blue publicly demanding a female staffer working out of the whitehouse be fired immediately.

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1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

What was the sex scandal thing at the end of the last thread? Did I miss something in the super fast pace that the US Pol thread moves these days?

Melania asked for someone to be fired.  https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/13/politics/melania-trump-mira-ricardel/index.html

ETA:  What Loki said

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8 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I don't know what Jace is smoking but if we can blame the GOP for Alien: Covenant that would be amazing since it's the WORST FILM OF ALL TIME.

 

*flips desk*

 

The Cucks Burned Ohio to flip Flordia in California firewall dozens breaching border for Ted Cruz!

Send Troops! Send Troops! Send to Accosta! Acosted!

He punch! Bad! Bad CNN!

SAD!

FAKE NEWS!

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11 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Boom goes the cannon watch the blood and the shit spray.

Democrats just flipped jeff Dunham’s California district:

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-midterm-election-day-updates-hold-ca-10-denham-harder-1541137532-htmlstory.html

Did the Democrat run under his porn name? Josh Harder, it's brilliant.

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12 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Melania is out of the blue publicly demanding a female staffer working out of the whitehouse be fired immediately.

 

12 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

Melania asked for someone to be fired.  https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/13/politics/melania-trump-mira-ricardel/index.html

ETA:  What Loki said

Huh, interesting. No doubt Trump would easily and with great finesse shut down any sex scandal nonsense by simply saying she's too old and plain-looking to get him hard.

In the mean time, don't let her throw away any dresses.

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Nothing's set yet, but Seth Moulton (D-MA) is claiming he's got more than 20 House Democrats who are going to vote against Pelosi as Speaker. If true, even if Democrats won every remaining undecided House race (and even if all of them supported Pelosi), it'd be enough to block her. I'm skeptical it'll come to pass, almost entirely because they have not put forward any specific challenger to her. It seems like they're hoping to get her drop out sometime this month and then have the caucus figure out next steps in December. But Pelosi has beaten back every previous leadership challenge and my money is on her, for now.

There's probably no getting the newly-elected Democrats who promised not to support her (and Pelosi may not even want their vote, the better to protect them from 2020 attacks of breaking their promise), but I suspect she could flip a few of the current Democrats who oppose her and are in safer districts. We'll see.

I definitely want to see new leadership, but I don't want to see chaos right at the start of the new majority either. Hopefully Moulton, Tim Ryan, et al. can come up with a specific candidate for Speaker, and it better be someone the left-wing of the caucus is fine with as well, or things are going to get messy.

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2 minutes ago, Fez said:

I definitely want to see new leadership, but I don't want to see chaos right at the start of the new majority either. Hopefully Moulton, Tim Ryan, et al. can come up with a specific candidate for Speaker, and it better be someone the left-wing of the caucus is fine with as well, or things are going to get messy.

The obvious compromise is to let those opposed to Pelosi help choose a majority leader and put Steny out to pasture.

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6 hours ago, Triskele said:

Someone is reporting that the Dems broke through as bigly as they did in part because demographics of voters have shifted a bit in the age of Trump in ways that were not exactly predicted by the people that orchestrated the ratfucking of 2010 had envisioned with their gerrymander design.  Fascinating...

I wrote about this last year - gerrymanders lose their effectiveness over time. They are based on the present-day electorate, not on future electorates. Something that was effective in 2012 was much less effective in 2018, and even less in 2020. Older voters die, younger voters come of age, people move in and out of state, immigrants gain citizenships and voting rights, existing voters change their political views and voting patterns.

This is something that Democrats should keep in mind as well. In 2016, people talked of "blue wall" as if it was a real, 100% solid scientific fact, and actual Democratic campaign strategy took its existence as an axiom. This is one of the things that got Trump elected. Just because a state (or a congressional district) has reliably voted for you (or your opponent) last 10 elections, doesn't mean they will do so the next election. This is why a full-court, 50-state pressing is the only reliable way to win elections.

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8 hours ago, DMC said:

The obvious compromise is to let those opposed to Pelosi help choose a majority leader and put Steny out to pasture.

If that were possible, sure. But I think Pelosi and Hoyer are kind of a package deal. Also, Majority Leader is a much lower threshold to win, just a majority of the caucus, and Hoyer already released a letter with 155 House Democrats announcing their support for him to be Majority Leader. Some of them could also change their minds, but I'd be surprised if they turned on him unless Pelosi was also going and it was a wholesale changing of the guard.

Clyburn is probably the only safe one. The backlash would be too great if he were replaced by anyone but another African American, and no one in the CBC is going to challenge him. There'd also be a ton of backlash if Pelosi were replaced by a man, but there's a lot of women in the caucus and not all of them support her; there's options to find a challenger.

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34 minutes ago, Fez said:

If that were possible, sure.

Oh yeah, I wasn't saying it will happen, but rather it should happen.  Like those proposed trades in sports that make too much sense for both teams to ever actually come to fruition.  As you said, Hoyer looks quite secure with releasing the list of 155 pledged supporters.

36 minutes ago, Fez said:

But I think Pelosi and Hoyer are kind of a package deal.

I'm not sure about that - the two have been longtime rivals.  I do think the only way Hoyer doesn't become ML is if Pelosi asked and/or pressured him to step aside.  Would he even do so in that case?  I don't know.

37 minutes ago, Fez said:

Clyburn is probably the only safe one.

And yet he's the only one that has an actual challenger for his position - Diana DeGette (CO) - at this point.  There is some pressure from the black caucus to push him up to number 2.  That could be the closest thing to a realistic compromise - bumping him up then putting new people in the #3-5 spots, e.g. DeGette as whip, Sanchez as caucus chair, and a newcomer as vice chair.

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10 hours ago, Fez said:

Nothing's set yet, but Seth Moulton (D-MA) is claiming he's got more than 20 House Democrats who are going to vote against Pelosi as Speaker. If true, even if Democrats won every remaining undecided House race (and even if all of them supported Pelosi), it'd be enough to block her. I'm skeptical it'll come to pass, almost entirely because they have not put forward any specific challenger to her. It seems like they're hoping to get her drop out sometime this month and then have the caucus figure out next steps in December. But Pelosi has beaten back every previous leadership challenge and my money is on her, for now.

There's probably no getting the newly-elected Democrats who promised not to support her (and Pelosi may not even want their vote, the better to protect them from 2020 attacks of breaking their promise), but I suspect she could flip a few of the current Democrats who oppose her and are in safer districts. We'll see.

The compromise I expect to see is that most of the Democrats who pledged not to support Pelosi will abstain from voting, rather than voting against her.  This would mean that Pelosi only needs the support of more Democrats than the Republican caucus, which would be something like 203 or so.  That would allow 25-30 Democrats to get away with not officially supporting her.  Now, if there's a few die hards like Moulton who will definitely vote no, not just abstain, then that number goes down, but nonetheless the math is there.

I'm a little disappointed, there are so many women in the Democratic Caucus, I had really hoped that one of them would want to step into the limelight and challenge Pelosi.  But it's looking more and more like that isn't going to happen.  I still think that the Democrats always need to make sure they have some youngish people in prominent roles, much more so than Republicans do. 

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Yes, nearly everyone agrees it was a blue wave; 538 pointed out in its chat that there was probably an anchoring effect from Tuesday night where the Democrats weren't doing as well as they finally did. This cemented in a lot of people's minds the idea of a blue ripple.

Speaker of the House is an important responsibility particularly since there is a non-trivial chance (still close to 0) the line of succession becomes relevant. I dont have strong opinions about Pelosi either way, but I'm not sure I would want her to be President in the event Trump/Pence are booted out of office.

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4 hours ago, Gorn said:

I wrote about this last year - gerrymanders lose their effectiveness over time. They are based on the present-day electorate, not on future electorates. Something that was effective in 2012 was much less effective in 2018, and even less in 2020. Older voters die, younger voters come of age, people move in and out of state, immigrants gain citizenships and voting rights, existing voters change their political views and voting patterns.

This is something that Democrats should keep in mind as well. In 2016, people talked of "blue wall" as if it was a real, 100% solid scientific fact, and actual Democratic campaign strategy took its existence as an axiom. This is one of the things that got Trump elected. Just because a state (or a congressional district) has reliably voted for you (or your opponent) last 10 elections, doesn't mean they will do so the next election. This is why a full-court, 50-state pressing is the only reliable way to win elections.

Yes. One reason the Democrats unexpectedly flipped the First Congressional district in South Carolina is because the Charleston/Hilton Head area has been booming with retirees from the Northeast the last few years, so that the majority of the voters in that district have now been born outside of South Carolina.

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14 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The compromise I expect to see is that most of the Democrats who pledged not to support Pelosi will abstain from voting, rather than voting against her.

Yeah I've seen this bandied about and while I agree it's the most likely thing to happen, I think it's pretty damn feckless.

13 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

538 pointed out in its chat that there was probably an anchoring effect from Tuesday night where the Democrats weren't doing as well as they finally did.

Yep, like I said - it was a slow wave.

My last post got me thinking that without Hoyer the Democratic leadership looks pretty damn liberal.  In 2006 there was concern Pelosi would steer the caucus too far to the left, especially after she endorsed John Murtha over Hoyer in the Majority Leader race (even though Murtha was actually more conservative than Hoyer on everything but Iraq, but that's neither here nor there).  I don't think that fear with Pelosi exists anymore, for a number of reasons.  But since I'm a huge huge dork I decided to look up everyone's DW-NOMINATE score to see how they rank as most "liberal" (highest negative score).  These numbers are out of the 196 Democrats that served in the House in the for the 115th Congress:

  • Pelosi (Minority Leader) - 32nd most liberal
  • Hoyer (Minority Whip) - 112th
  • Clyburn (Asst. Democratic Leader) - 49th
  • Crowley (Caucus Chair - defeated by Ocasio-Cortez) - 78th
  • Sanchez (Vice Chair) - 28th
  • DeGette (Chief Deputy Whip) - 63rd

Also of note, guess who the two most "moderate" (or least liberal) Democrats were?  Conor Lamb then Krysten Sinema.  Anyway, that is pretty liberal.  In fact, let's compare it to the Republican leadership ranks as most "conservative" (highest positive score) - there were 248 Republicans that served in the 115th:

  • Ryan (Speaker) - 90th most conservative
  • McCarthy (Majority Leader) - 144th
  • Scalise (Majority Whip) - 87th 
  • McMorris Rodgers (Conference Chair) - 162nd
  • Collins - (Vice Chair) - 47th
  • McHenry (Chief  Deputy Whip) - 75th

Now, some of this difference is contextual - the majority leadership will tend to have more "moderate" scores due to the fact they actually have to vote for what gets passed.  Not to mention the Republicans are more conservative than the Democrats are liberal and there's a quarter more of them.  But gotta say I find this difference interesting - the "average" for the six Dem leaders is 61 (31 percentile), while the average for the GOP is 100.8 (41 percentile).  So based on the numbers, the Freedom Caucus does have somewhat of a beef about being underrepresented.  I'm definitely happy about that, just hope it doesn't change.

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