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US Politics: Paradise Lost


Fragile Bird

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1 minute ago, lokisnow said:

20% of Democrats in the House will be California Democrats. That’s incredible

 

Is it?  1/8th of the country lives in California, and CA is overwhelmingly democratic.  That seems like about what it ought to be. 

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6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Is it?  1/8th of the country lives in California, and CA is overwhelmingly democratic.  That seems like about what it ought to be. 

It is kind of incredible in the sense of look how far we've come. California's congressional delegation went from 46% Republican in 1998 to 36% in 2006 to 26% in 2014 to 15% now.

If California did not become as overwhelming Democratic as it has over the past 20 years, Democrats would not be competitive in the House.

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1 minute ago, Fez said:

If California did not become as overwhelming Democratic as it has over the past 20 years, Democrats would not be competitive in the House.

Ehh, sort of.  If that growth in Democratic voters in CA was instead split evenly between CA, TX and FL, the electoral college would be handing the presidency to Democrats every year.

 

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1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

Ehh, sort of.  If that growth in Democratic voters in CA was instead split evenly between CA, TX and FL, the electoral college would be handing the presidency to Democrats every year.

Also true. Although since was more driven by in-state voters becoming more Democratic, rather than Democrats moving to the state, it doesn't feel like as much of a wasted opportunity. Certainly there's been some population movement, but even if all of them had gone to Texas instead, I don't think it would've flipped the state in 2016.

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Just now, Maithanet said:

Ehh, sort of.  If that growth in Democratic voters in CA was instead split evenly between CA, TX and FL, the electoral college would be handing the presidency to Democrats every year.

 

Well the good news is that most CA expats go to TX. 

538 has a Tx breakdown, as in virtually every statewide race the past eight years, margins in the rurals are why republicans win. Rural populations basically vote like committed minority populations, because they are in fact minoroties, but when suburbs split so evenly, the overwhelming margins in rurals hand a lot of races to republicans.

so democrats to win races need to:

increase their rural share

And

increase their minority populations share and vote count.

since African American vote share is nearly maxed out, the only improvements there are in increased turnout. But democrats would compete in every state if they increased their rural share by 5 points and increased their share of Hispanic votes by ten points and Hispanic turnout by five points.

but a lot of those hard fought gains are wiped out in an eye blink by a shift of one percent or two percent in the white suburban voters, so you can’t forget that you have to make sure you don’t let this population trend away from you.

democrats have also massively increased their vote share of non evangelical women, but have made extremely little progress with increasing their vote share with evangelical women which obscures democrat gains with women because evangelicals overall may only be 14% of the population but they’re 24% of the voters and vote 84% for the party of the antichrist.

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3 minutes ago, Fez said:

Also true. Although since was more driven by in-state voters becoming more Democratic, rather than Democrats moving to the state, it doesn't feel like as much of a wasted opportunity. Certainly there's been some population movement, but even if all of them had gone to Texas instead, I don't think it would've flipped the state in 2016.

Since 1998 the population has grown by 7 million people.  I don't know how much of that is immigration from other states/countries vs organic growth of people having babies, but that's approximately the population of Massachusetts.  And FYI, if the states of Massachusetts and Texas were combined into one horrible abomination of a state, it would have gone to Trump in 2016 by approximately just over 1%, but Beto would have won easily. 

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17 minutes ago, Fez said:

California's congressional delegation went from 46% Republican in 1998 to 36% in 2006 to 26% in 2014 to 15% now.

Yeah it's crazy the California delegation will only have 7 Republicans if Walters and Kim lose.

18 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well yeah ,you know, they would have done better, but weren't conservative enough.

Had a really gross thought:  Considering how often and quickly the GOP House eats its own leaders - I give McCarthy's tenure an over/under of 4 years, and that may be high - Cheney may well be looking at the top job soon.  I bet she'd beat Scalise in a leadership race if she has the ambition to challenge him, and she definitely does.  We could be looking at Speaker Cheney in a few years.  Ew.  Always here to brighten everyone's day!

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6 minutes ago, DMC said:

Had a really gross thought:  Considering how often and quickly the GOP House eats its own leaders - I give McCarthy's tenure an over/under of 4 years, and that may be high

It really depends on whether they stay in the minority or not.  Being GOP minority leader is really easy, just oppose everything the Democrats do.  But if they take the majority again, then yes, they're growing more ungovernable by the day. 

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Back in 2010, when the Democrats got creamed, I think most liberals and Democrats accepted it for what it was. And that the main reason was because the Republican Party was successful in fear mongering and lying about the ACA.
The point is no wacko conspiracy theory was offered up to explain the Democrat's loss by Democrats and liberals. Maybe a whole of hand wringing, but that was about it.
Contrast that to today's current Republican Party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/truth-virtue-trump-loyalty.html

Quote

What with the midterm elections — and the baseless Republican cries of voting fraud — I don’t know how many people heard about Trump’s decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson, wife of casino owner and Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson. 

 

Quote

The attempt by Trump and his party to shut down the legally mandated Florida recount with claims, based on no evidence, of large-scale voting fraud fits right into this partisan epistemology. Do Republicans really believe that there were vast numbers of fraudulent or forged ballots? Even asking that question is a category error. They don’t “really believe” anything, except that they should get what they want. Any vote count that might favor a Democrat is bad for them; therefore it’s fraudulent, no evidence needed.

The Republican Party's definition of "fraudulent voting": Somebody voted for Democrats.

Quote

So the people making inconvenient assertions must be in the pay of sinister forces. In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won a Senate seat on the strength of late-counted ballots. Did you know that the state G.O.P. has filed a freedom of information request for information on interactions between election officials and, you guessed it, George Soros?

Conservatives gone cuckoo, cuckoo.

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14 minutes ago, DMC said:

We could be looking at Speaker Cheney in a few years.  Ew.  Always here to brighten everyone's day!

Thanks. I won't be able to sleep tonight thinking about this. Scary. Very scary indeed.

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8 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

It really depends on whether they stay in the minority or not.  Being GOP minority leader is really easy, just oppose everything the Democrats do. 

Eh, usually, but I could definitely see the wackadoos growing cantankerous if they stay in the minority.  While McCarthy's done a good job kissing the Freedom Caucus' ass, there's no love lost there, and I think they'll take any reason to bring the knives out (and staying in the minority would be a fairly valid reason).

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44 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Back in 2010, when the Democrats got creamed, I think most liberals and Democrats accepted it for what it was. And that the main reason was because the Republican Party was successful in fear mongering and lying about the ACA.
The point is no wacko conspiracy theory was offered up to explain the Democrat's loss by Democrats and liberals. Maybe a whole of hand wringing, but that was about it.
Contrast that to today's current Republican Party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/truth-virtue-trump-loyalty.html

 

The Republican Party's definition of "fraudulent voting": Somebody voted for Democrats.

Conservatives gone cuckoo, cuckoo.

FIA on George Soros?  Seriously?  That's some of the dumbest shit ever

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3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Since you were just looking at the liberal/conservative rankings, have you seen a breakdown on the Republicans who lost? Because my gut tells me they were more likely to be moderate which could explain this change, among others to come.  

Alright so based off that Axios post there are 26 GOP incumbents that lost - I'm including Mia Love (UT-4), Bruce Poliquin (ME-2), and Claudia Tenney (NY-22) even though those races aren't over yet.  It should be noted the Axios post is six days old, so I'm not entirely sure it's totally accurate - they didn't have Mimi Walters (CA-45) on the list, so I added her as I think she'll lose.  They also didn't have Rob Woodall (GA-7) and Chris Collins (NY-27) on the list.  They're both on the dataset below, but with *'s because I think they'll win so I didn't include them in averaging - sorry @Fez!

Here's the dataset of the 29 (counting those two) GOP incumbents that lost or might lose, along with their actual DW-NOMINATE (1st dimension) scores, then how they would rank as most "conservative" - remember 248 Republicans served during the 115th Congress due to vacancies and replacements.

  • BRAT, David A.                0.824    3
  • *WOODALL, Rob            0.648    38
  • ROHRABACHER, Dana   0.627    46
  • SESSIONS, Pete             0.585    71
  • YODER, Kevin                 0.559    88
  • LOVE, Mia                       0.544    99
  • BLUM, Rod                      0.515    114
  • LEWIS, Jason Mark        0.505    123
  • CULBERSON, John        0.503    125
  • HANDEL, Karen              0.499    126
  • ROTHFUS, Keith             0.496    128
  • COFFMAN, Mike             0.492    132
  • HULTGREN, Randy         0.49      134
  • RUSSELL, Steve             0.475    138
  • TAYLOR, Scott William   0.455    147
  • BISHOP, Michael Dean   0.45      150
  • YOUNG, David                0.443    155
  • WALTERS, Mimi              0.433    158
  • ROSKAM, Peter              0.429    163
  • PAULSEN, Erik               0.403    171
  • KNIGHT, Steve               0.398    173
  • *COLLINS, Chris            0.366    192
  • POLIQUIN, Bruce Lee    0.362    196
  • LANCE, Leonard             0.329    210
  • COMSTOCK, Barbara J. 0.277    224
  • TENNEY, Claudia            0.272    226
  • FASO, John J.                 0.235    237
  • DONOVAN, Daniel M.,    0.226    238
  • CURBELO, Carlos            0.211    244

My first response here is fucken a, I figured Rohrabacher and Sessions would be the most conservative losers but look at Dave Brat - he was the third (!) most conservative member during this session.  That's despite the fact his district (VA-7) only has a Cook PVI of R+6.  That's ballsy, and also a very good way to lose.  Also, if you don't know who Brat is, he's the guy that beat former Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 primary.  Anyway, the average ranking out of the 27 I'm counting is 148.9.  The median for all Republicans would be 124.5, so while that is more moderate, the incumbent losers weren't that more moderate than your average Republican. 

The average NOMINATE score tells the same story:  the average for the losers is .4558.  The mean for the entire GOP caucus was .4915, so while the losers were more moderate, the difference is only .0357.  Again, not as drastic as expected.  And if you're wondering about the median, the difference is even smaller, only .0285.  All in all, gotta say I'm pretty surprised there wasn't more of a difference - the Dems did a good job picking off a handful of the most conservative members and many of their other pickups were pretty much "average" Republicans in terms of NOMINATE scores.

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7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Also, if you don't know who Brat is, he's the guy that beat former Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 primary. 

Oh yeah I remember Brat. Other than being a typical so called "libertarian" goober, Brat was the guy that stuck a knife in Cantor's back, while Cantor was running around the general area looking to jam a knife in John Bonehead's back. Cantor was so busy trying to screw over Bonehead, he forgot to look over his own shoulder. Pretty hilarious.

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1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Back in 2010, when the Democrats got creamed, I think most liberals and Democrats accepted it for what it was. And that the main reason was because the Republican Party was successful in fear mongering and lying about the ACA.
The point is no wacko conspiracy theory was offered up to explain the Democrat's loss by Democrats and liberals. Maybe a whole of hand wringing, but that was about it.
Contrast that to today's current Republican Party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/truth-virtue-trump-loyalty.html

 

The Republican Party's definition of "fraudulent voting": Somebody voted for Democrats.

Conservatives gone cuckoo, cuckoo.

Krugman sure has that right: 'fake noose' is anything that isn't yassah massa.  The worst is that other regimes are using this too, as in Egypt.  Any criticism of the ruling junta or government is now being called fake news, shut down and the reporters jailed. It doesn't even have to be a news site and the writers don't need to be journalists.  Anybody who gets more than a certain number of followers is labeled a news site, shut down and the owner of the site / twitter feed etc., jailed.

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57 minutes ago, DMC said:

The average NOMINATE score tells the same story:  the average for the losers .4558.  The mean for the entire GOP caucus was .4915, so while the losers were more moderate, the difference is only .0357.  Again, not as drastic as expected.  And if you're wondering about the median, the difference is even smaller, only .0285.  All in all, gotta say I'm pretty surprised there wasn't more of a difference - the Dems did a good job picking off a handful of the most conservative members and many of their other pickups were pretty much "average" Republicans in terms of NOMINATE scores.

First, thank you for doing the leg work. Regarding the data not meeting what you expected, I think I have the answer why: retirements. Five Republicans retired who represented Clinton won districts, and several more were from districts that Trump narrowly won. I'm sure you'd see results more in line with your expectations if you added the retired Congressmen whose districts flipped. 

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8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm sure you'd see results more in line with your expectations if you added the retired Congressmen whose districts flipped. 

That's probably true, but retirements would still be independent of my expectations in regards to comparing the losing incumbents against the entire caucus.  I think the most interesting interpretation of these results is that incumbents in vulnerable districts tended to vote more conservative than they probably should have - which suggests they were more worried about staying in line with Trump than signaling to their constituency that they were more moderate/independent/bi-partisan/what have you.  The fear Trump propagates is truly top-down!

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