U.S. Politics: It’s beginning to look a lot like Rescission

[Rorshach]

3 minutes ago, LongRider said:

jfc

 

A bit too short a summary. 

The link is to the police, not the government, and the police say - in that link - that "as to the assessment of the video which is said to show the murders, work still remains related to technical analysis and review. We believe, however, that we can say that so far nothing concrete points to the video not being genuine"

Norwegian text, so that other norwegians can critisize my fast-and-loose translation: "Når det gjelder vurderingen av videoen som angivelig viser drapene, gjenstår det fortsatt en del arbeid med teknisk analyse og vurdering. Vi mener likevel å ha grunnlag for å si at det så langt ikke er noe konkret som tyder på at videoen ikke er ekte."

[LongRider]

9 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

You already voted MAGAts. No takesies backsies.

Unless of course you compliment my plumage (definition of compliment negotiable). Then your vote can be changed.

 

(Hey, I never claimed to be immune to corruption)

Don't mistake making a comment for voting, I never offered to change my vote.   Comments on your plumage will be whitheld,  for now.

 

dearie

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, DMC said:

Indeed it has, since about the late nineties.  This is in spite of the fact incumbents' fundraising advantage has gotten increasingly ridiculous (at least in real dollars).  I tend to think a decline in incumbency advantage is inevitable with rising polarization since party affiliation is the only thing that matters on the ballot once the latter dominates.  However, it should be noted that the incumbency advantage actually consistently increased from WWII until the mid-90s (see figure 2, page 40).  That's about 10-15 years after the polarization trend started.  I could do the typical academic thing and write this off as a "lagged effect," but I'm not entirely sure.

Also, I found it interesting Abramowitz found basically no effect of voting records (DW-NOMINATE scores).  Be on the look out to see if he publishes a more detailed analysis of that himself.

What does the data say about incumbency advantages in primaries? I’m curious because I would assume it would overlap with the decline in general races, given that the starting point is basically when Newt Gingrich set American politics on fire.

[all swedes are racist]

really excellent rgb didn’t retire back when there might have been half a chance of getting someone to the left of mike cernovich appointed to the court

[DMC]

44 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

What does the data say about incumbency advantages in primaries? I’m curious because I would assume it would overlap with the decline in general races, given that the starting point is basically when Newt Gingrich set American politics on fire.

There's a pretty big gap in the lit when it comes to research on primary challenges, although there's been an uptick since "getting primaried" entered the lexicon.  Problem is the findings are inconclusive and/or contradictory between papers, and different researchers use different methods to operationalize "legitimate" (or whatever) challenges.  A friend of mine is doing a paper on primary challenges and how/whether its based on ideology/voting records for his diss.  Can't quite remember what his preliminary results were (although they definitely were weird), I'll try to remember to ask him after the break.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

There's a pretty big gap in the lit when it comes to research on primary challenges, although there's been an uptick since "getting primaried" entered the lexicon.  Problem is the findings are inconclusive and/or contradictory between papers, and different researchers use different methods to operationalize "legitimate" (or whatever) challenges.  A friend of mine is doing a paper on primary challenges and how/whether its based on ideology/voting records for his diss.  Can't quite remember what his preliminary results were (although they definitely were weird), I'll try to remember to ask him after the break.

Interesting. Setting that aside for now, I asked because I wonder if "getting primaried" is playing a large role (or at least some role) in the decline of the incumbency advantage. It both causes incumbents to be more extreme and leads to more extreme candidates coming out of the primaries. It doesn't matter in deep red or blue areas, but it does cost parties seats they'd otherwise likely win with a more moderate candidate. Furthermore, being more extreme puts a target on your back in purple areas from both the opposing candidate (who may be more qualified) and the national parties. I could see more extreme candidates becoming incumbents and lasting only a congressional session or two and that that's dragging down the incumbency advantage. 

[Martell Spy]

Wow, sounds like Trump is afraid of Beto. Also, what position did Trump win, or even run for, previous to running for President?

Trump pans Beto 2020 talk: 'I thought you were supposed to win before you run for president'

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/trump-takes-jab-beto-orourke-1073526

Quote

 

President Donald Trump jabbed at Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Friday, wondering aloud during an exchange with reporters why the Texas Democrat has been suggested as a potential 2020 presidential candidate even though he fell short in his Senate bid earlier this year.

“I thought you were supposed to win before you run for president,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a bill signing on Friday.

 

 

[all swedes are racist]

5 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Wow, sounds like Trump is afraid of Beto. Also, what position did Trump win, or even run for, previous to running for President?

Trump pans Beto 2020 talk: 'I thought you were supposed to win before you run for president'

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/trump-takes-jab-beto-orourke-1073526

 

yeah, if there is one thing you can say about trump its that he certainly stands up to people he perceives as more powerful than him

[Jace, Extat]

9 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Wow, sounds like Trump is afraid of Beto. Also, what position did Trump win, or even run for, previous to running for President?

Trump pans Beto 2020 talk: 'I thought you were supposed to win before you run for president'

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/trump-takes-jab-beto-orourke-1073526

 

He won the primary against the crooked Hillary.

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Setting that aside for now, I asked because I wonder if "getting primaried" is playing a large role (or at least some role) in the decline of the incumbency advantage. It both causes incumbents to be more extreme and leads to more extreme candidates coming out of the primaries.

Definitely possible.  Another way getting primaried may impact incumbents is a very serious challenge weakens a moderate candidate in the general.  I've always been suspect of the idea that tough primaries "bloody up" the winner, but it would align with Abramowitz (and many others') findings that the advantage is decreasing the most for moderate incumbents.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, DMC said:

Definitely possible.  Another way getting primaried may impact incumbents is a very serious challenge weakens a moderate candidate in the general.  I've always been suspect of the idea that tough primaries "bloody up" the winner, but it would align with Abramowitz (and many others') findings that the advantage is decreasing the most for moderate incumbents.

That also crossed my mind, but I was mainly thinking about House members and I don't know how great of an effect it would have on the incumbent absent something scandals being revealed just before the primary vote takes place. It certainly hurts the incumbent at the presidential level (Carter/Kennedy), and it could hurt incumbent Senators, but the race would have to be getting considerable media attention for being bloodied up to have a significant impact lower down the chain.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

Former President Barack Obama has taken to heart one cause above others since leaving the White House: the fight to end gerrymandering. 

On Thursday he announced that the progressive Organizing for Action group, which formed out of the pieces of Obama’s re-election campaign, would be folded into the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

In a Medium post, Obama called gerrymandered maps “undemocratic” and “unrepresentative,” saying they have “too often stood in the way of change.”

While OFA had previously partnered with the NDRC, the former will now cease to exist, according to The Atlantic. Its resources will be funneled to help the redistricting group fulfill its mission to fairly redraw state maps where district boundaries have been manipulated to make Democrat wins more difficult.

The merger will create a “joint force that is focused on this issue of singular importance,” Obama said in a Thursday evening phone call, per The Atlantic. 

 

Barack Obama Throws All His Weight Behind ‘Issue Of Singular Importance’
The former president’s activist group Organizing for Action will be folded into a fight to end gerrymandering.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-gerrymandering_us_5c1d0871e4b08aaf7a8826f5

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, LongRider said:

Orange Stains rather than Orange Shirts seems appropriate to me, dearie. 

Ooooo -- harsh!

Like it though.  Appropriate for supporters of Pooty poot and Erdagon's bitch.

 

[lokisnow]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Indeed it has, since about the late nineties.  This is in spite of the fact incumbents' fundraising advantage has gotten increasingly ridiculous (at least in real dollars).  I tend to think a decline in incumbency advantage is inevitable with rising polarization since party affiliation is the only thing that matters on the ballot once the latter dominates.  However, it should be noted that the incumbency advantage actually consistently increased from WWII until the mid-90s (see figure 2, page 40).  That's about 10-15 years after the polarization trend started.  I could do the typical academic thing and write this off as a "lagged effect," but I'm not entirely sure.

Also, I found it interesting Abramowitz found basically no effect of voting records (DW-NOMINATE scores).  Be on the look out to see if he publishes a more detailed analysis of that himself.

The polarization trend tracks with numbers of baby boomers in Congress, I’m guessing the baby boomers fully took over Congress in the mid late nineties while the incumbency advantage tracked to the silents and ww2 having control of Congress. And the more baby boomers pushed out silents and ww2 people the more polarized congress came and the less incumbency mattered.

[Fez]

It doesn't excuse at all how things are going down, but here's some pretty good background on why Trump decided to pull out of Syria (and it's not just corruption!)

Quote

 

A fateful decision by national security adviser John Bolton to expand the United States’ goals in Syria backfired, and is a key reason why President Donald Trump ordered a total withdrawal of U.S. troops, two senior administration officials told The Daily Beast.

Bolton in September added a second mission to the the already open-ended operation in Syria. In addition to destroying the so-called Islamic State, U.S. troops would stay in Syria indefinitely, forcing Iranian forces there to eventually withdraw.

Trump adopted a bellicose stance towards Tehran long before he became president. But he was never comfortable with an indefinite stay in Syria yoked to Iran. The officials said that Trump was willing to tolerate fighting ISIS, but was already uncomfortable with the duration of the war for that purpose. In the spring, he told audiences that he was willing to pull out of Syria “very soon,” something his senior advisers had to expend political capital to reverse.

Yet in September, Bolton—known as one of Washington’s most-hawkish foreign policy hands, especially towards Iran—effectively reshaped the war, with a new goal. “We're not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders and that includes Iranian proxies and militias,” he told reporters during the United Nations General Assembly.

 

Back during the 2016 primaries, Trump took the stance that the aftermath of the Iraq war was a terrible mistake by Bush (agreed!) and I think he's terrified of getting caught up in his own middle eastern quagmire; its one of the few things, beyond a recession, that would start to tank his approval among his base. So when Bolton started taking the steps to get us into another massive quagmire, Trump got skittish and took the first excuse he could find to pull out entirely.

[SweetPea]

10 hours ago, Rorshach said:

A bit too short a summary. 

The link is to the police, not the government, and the police say - in that link - that "as to the assessment of the video which is said to show the murders, work still remains related to technical analysis and review. We believe, however, that we can say that so far nothing concrete points to the video not being genuine"

Why is the genuinity of the video even being questioned? Anyone who watches it can tell it's obviously not fake.

The timing is unfortunate for Trump, but I still support his decision.

[ThinkerX]

51 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

Why is the genuinity of the video even being questioned? Anyone who watches it can tell it's obviously not fake.

The timing is unfortunate for Trump, but I still support his decision.

because these days there is enough in the way of 'fake news' out there to where even the obvious must be checked.

[The Marquis de Leech]

13 hours ago, DMC said:

However, it should be noted that the incumbency advantage actually consistently increased from WWII until the mid-90s (see figure 2, page 40).  That's about 10-15 years after the polarization trend started.  I could do the typical academic thing and write this off as a "lagged effect," but I'm not entirely sure.

I wonder if that is the Southern Realignment at work - Southern voters happy to vote for their local Democrat when that Democrat is the incumbent, then the seat flips when the incumbent retires. That would create an apparent incumbency advantage relative to open seat races.

[DMC]

16 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It certainly hurts the incumbent at the presidential level (Carter/Kennedy), and it could hurt incumbent Senators, but the race would have to be getting considerable media attention for being bloodied up to have a significant impact lower down the chain.

Well, I don't think it necessarily hurts the incumbent at the presidential level as much as it is simply a reflection/portent of that incumbent's weakness.  As for media attention, that's a bit relative - don't see there being much difference from most Senators and members of the House.

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I wonder if that is the Southern Realignment at work.

Yes, that certainly would be the obvious explanation behind a "lagged" effect.  However, one would still have to demonstrate why polarization started going up considerably earlier if these lingering Dems were still around.  This is actually an interesting and simple question to answer, but far too time consuming for an internet forum about a fantasy series.

[LongRider]

More info on the murder of the Scandinavian women.

 

Quote

Uncensored images of the severed and partially severed heads of two Scandinavian tourists murdered in the Moroccan mountains have been plastered all over the Facebook page of one of their grieving mothers.

It is not clear if the images were taken by investigators or the killers but the horror development came after friends and family urged people not to watch a video showing the decapitation of one of the victims circulating online.

news.com.au   December 22, 20183:36pm

Quote

Nine more people have been arrested in Morocco over links to the four initial suspects in the murder of two Scandinavian university students in a remote corner of the Atlas mountains, authorities said...…….

Moroccan authorities said on Thursday the four initial suspects arrested after the murder had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

Morocco murders: agents investigate footage as terror fears mount

Read more

The bodies of the two women were found on Monday. The pair had pitched their tent in an isolated mountain area two hours’ walk from the tourist village of Imlil. One of them had been beheaded, according to a source close to the investigation...….Authorities are also working to determine the authenticity of a video posted on social media that allegedly shows the murder of one of the tourists, according to the prosecutor. “At this point, there is no tangible evidence that the video is not authentic,” Norway’s criminal investigations agency, Kripos, said on Friday.         Fri 21 Dec 2018 11.43 EST   The Guardian