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

[Fez]

37 minutes ago, DMC said:

NC over TN is fair - but it's Tillis running for reelection not Burr.  Kansas would be if it becomes open, but that's kinda my point.  Can't see Cornyn's seat being competitive unless he retires.

I don't think an open seat on its own is worth enough to move Tennessee up that much. An open seat in Idaho or Wyoming doesn't mean there's a pick-up opportunity there, and I think Tennessee is fast approaching those states.

[Mexal]

Another example. Fox News contributor putting it out there that the delay was due to Sullivan's questions about the FBI and SC, not due to Flynn hoping that additional cooperation can be taken into account for the sentencing given Sullivan has accepted Flynn's plea. So this is another narrative that will be pushed that's blatantly untrue.

 

 

[Fez]

I'll believe it when I see it, but I'm shocked that even this minor amount of gun control is still quietly being worked on rather than the previous talk of it being buried away and forgotten.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I'm really hoping Hickenlooper decides to run for the Senate seat against Gardner instead of fighting for space in what will be a packed presidential primary.

Similarly, I think if Bullock runs against Daines for the Montana seat, there is definitely a possible pickup there.

Also, with two more years of organizing and fundraising under her belt, I think Stacey Abrams could really give Perdue a run for his money in Georgia.

Yeah all three of those would be close to ideal recruits.

1 minute ago, Fez said:

An open seat in Idaho or Wyoming doesn't mean there's a pick-up opportunity there, and I think Tennessee is fast approaching those states.

Talk about Moore all you want, but we saw Jones win in Alabama and Brown win in Massachusetts in the past 8 years.  Strange things happen at the 1-2 point.  And no, Tennessee isn't at the Wyoming level, that's just silly looking at the numbers.  It's at the "maybe a Dem can win once in a blue moon" level.

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah all three of those would be close to ideal recruits.

Talk about Moore all you want, but we saw Jones win in Alabama and Brown win in Massachusetts in the past 8 years.  Strange things happen at the 1-2 point.  And no, Tennessee isn't at the Wyoming level, that's just silly looking at the numbers.  It's at the "maybe a Dem can win once in a blue moon" level.

I'm not saying its at Wyoming yet (hence #8), but its heading in that direction. And I agree that every seat should be competed, in case something happens. But I don't think this retirement changes the 2020 calculus at all.

[Ormond]

In reading this thread I have the feeling that some people are a bit too fixed on straight-line extrapolation of "trends". This is a problem with the way the average person thinks in Western and especially American culture. Sometimes a bit more dialectical thinking, which is more common in East Asian culture, is good for one. 

Westerners tend to expect past trends to continue indefinitely into the future. East Asians are more likely to think trends are likely to reverse in the future. 

No trend lasts forever. This works both with trends one likes and that one dislikes. Part of the problem Democrats had in 2016 may be that too many of them were complacently sure that demographic trends in terms of ethnicity and age would make Trump's election impossible. Some of the recent discussion about Tennessee seems to imply that it's almost impossible for the Republican trend in that state to reverse.

Some day Tennessee will swing back toward the Democrats, and also some day California will swing back toward the Republicans. Assuming things can't change is a way to discourage Democrats in both states not to work as hard as they need to in order to move Tennessee toward the Democrats and to insure that California stays Democratic. Complete straight-line extrapolation would seem to lead to too much despair about Tennessee and too much overconfidence about California. 

 

[Fragile Bird]

53 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'll believe it when I see it, but I'm shocked that even this minor amount of gun control is still quietly being worked on rather than the previous talk of it being buried away and forgotten.

As I’m sure you know, a lengthy report on safety in schools was just released, made in response to the Florida school shooting.

The students asked for major changes to gun laws. The first response by the WH is to announce regulations brought in by the Obama administration to ensure students are punished the same way when they break rules, because non-white kids and special needs kids were shown to be treated more harshly than white kids, are going to be cancelled.

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I don't think an open seat on its own is worth enough to move Tennessee up that much. An open seat in Idaho or Wyoming doesn't mean there's a pick-up opportunity there, and I think Tennessee is fast approaching those states.

Tennessee isn’t approaching Wyoming: just looks at the demographic and regional geographic differences. Wyoming is all white all rural. Tennessee is not and it shares regional similarities with its neighbors to the north as much as it does with the confederate states to the south. And non white voters are mobilizing in these geographic regions in numbers unseen since the civil rights act and 2008 election. That sort of regional ferment ennable changes that aren’t possible in Wyoming.

but even look at Wyoming 2016: 447,000 eligible voting age population, 240,000 registered voters, turnout of 258,000 on Election Day for 107% participation (same day registration).

well gee whiz, there’s 200,000 eligible voters not registered, I bet a lot of them are young too. No democrat party has ever bothered with them, but the ROI of doing such investment is almost the highest in the country if your total amount of voters in a presidential year is ONLY, 258,000.

And there are democrat votes there. Republicans have 190,000 to 45,000 registration advantage, but in the 2018 senate race, the democrat got 61,000 votes, significantly outperforming registration. And turnout slumped in Wyoming for republicans.

yes, the percentages are brutal R vs D, and even in that race, but the way math works is that in small states those percentages change really fast, registering 2,500 voters is a one percent increase, no other state do you get that huge an increase for such a tiny registration achievement. This is why focusing on percentages is so incredibly self defeating. Given the registration advantage and the small pool of available unregistered voters you probably can’t win there unless voters defect from republicans, but hey you can try and you can make republicans sweat small states dems have ignored.

and the geographic, regional holds true for Wyoming and Idaho too, if democrats can invest and run and recruit in Montana the same recipe can be applied to the geo regional siblings. Change will take time and successive cycles of investment, but it will change direction.

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, Ormond said:

No trend lasts forever. This works both with trends one likes and that one dislikes. Part of the problem Democrats had in 2016 may be that too many of them were complacently sure that demographic trends in terms of ethnicity and age would make Trump's election impossible. Some of the recent discussion about Tennessee seems to imply that it's almost impossible for the Republican trend in that state to reverse.

Some day Tennessee will swing back toward the Democrats, and also some day California will swing back toward the Republicans. Assuming things can't change is a way to discourage Democrats in both states not to work as hard as they need to in order to move Tennessee toward the Democrats and to insure that California stays Democratic. Complete straight-line extrapolation would seem to lead to too much despair about Tennessee and too much overconfidence about California. 

 

I agree that a lot of Democrats seem to embrace "demographics is destiny" far too hard, and don't seem to understand that Clinton won more votes from white voters than nonwhite voters in 2016.  The idea that Democrats can just abandon white working class voters to Republicans and assume they can replace them with non-white voters is very foolish, Democrats absolutely 100% need both groups, and that will continue for the next two decades at least. 

HOWEVER, I'm not sure what point you're really making about trends.  Yes, they can stop or reverse, but you have to ask whether the things that caused the trend we're seeing have changed.  The Republican party is embracing white nationalism and anti-intellectualism to get votes.  That means that states with large numbers of nonwhite voters and highly educated voters (like California) are unlikely to be receptive to the Republican message.  Could that change?  Sure, but we'd see some evidence of that, in terms of the leaders they pick, the messages they embrace and the legislation they pass.  None of that has happened.  Likewise the policy of white nationalism and anti-intellectualism was chosen for a reason, and it is to improve Republican margins in states that have high levels of racial animosity and relatively low education.  States like Tennessee. 

As I posted earlier in the thread, Tennessee has moved from being a purple state in the 90s to Trump winning TN by 25 points.  That trend could reverse itself, but it's almost impossible it would happen in a single election cycle, and we'd see some evidence of softening support for Republicans statewide, as we've seen in places like AZ, TX and GA.  We are not seeing that trend in TN, quite the opposite. 

[lokisnow]

57 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

 

As I posted earlier in the thread, Tennessee has moved from being a purple state in the 90s to Trump winning TN by 25 points.  

Both bill and Hillary Clinton got 800,000 votes in TN in all three elections they ran in. In the other four recent presidential races democrats got 1 million votes.

TN isn’t truly 25 point gap, Hillary Clinton under performed the democrat baseline by 13%. And Donald trump over performed republican baseline by about  4 %.

which is to say, in TN  electorate it was a uniquely unpopular candidate vs someone who was slightly more popular than his peers.

did she accelerate a trend or was her performance merely an outlier or did her performance represent the zenith of a trend? 

I’d say TN at the presidential level is probably still about the average of 2004-2012 results. And the precipitous swing to being a 25 point gap is a result of candidate mismatch rather than representative of an otherwise stable electorate. 

[Tywin et al.]

Trump's taking some L's today. After having to shutter his foundation, which to me is tantamount to admitting wrong doing, the WH is now signalling that they're open to caving on the $5b in funding for the wall. Imo, if he doesn't get funding while controlling both chambers, he's never getting that stupid thing built. 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Ormond said:

No trend lasts forever. This works both with trends one likes and that one dislikes. Part of the problem Democrats had in 2016 may be that too many of them were complacently sure that demographic trends in terms of ethnicity and age would make Trump's election impossible. Some of the recent discussion about Tennessee seems to imply that it's almost impossible for the Republican trend in that state to reverse.

As a point of emphasis, this becomes readily apparent when you start researching "trends" in American politics for a living.

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Yes, they can stop or reverse, but you have to ask whether the things that caused the trend we're seeing have changed.  The Republican party is embracing white nationalism and anti-intellectualism to get votes.  That means that states with large numbers of nonwhite voters and highly educated voters (like California) are unlikely to be receptive to the Republican message.  Could that change?  Sure, but we'd see some evidence of that, in terms of the leaders they pick, the messages they embrace and the legislation they pass.  None of that has happened.

I think the point is partisan, as well as demographic, trends can often be countervailed by environmental or even trivial (e.g. candidate makeup) conditions on any given sunday.  An open seat is always good news for the challenging party, unless a state really is as partisan as Wyoming.

[Secretary of Eumenes]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Trump's taking some L's today. After having to shutter his foundation, which to me is tantamount to admitting wrong doing, the WH is now signalling that they're open to caving on the $5b in funding for the wall. Imo, if he doesn't get funding while controlling both chambers, he's never getting that stupid thing built. 

We need a wall or we will cease to be a sovereign nation!

Make America America Again!

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

For example, on Tuesday morning, the account tweeted:

It was 2007. House Republicans had just lost the majority, and I was sitting in a deer hunting tree stand one Saturday morning. That’s when I decided to go big and put together a completely comprehensive plan to update the nation’s entitlement system and reform the tax code.

The fiscal conservatives out there will ask, “Hey, whatever happened to that update of the entitlement system?” Short answer: As soon as the Republicans regained the presidency in 2017, it was jettisoned entirely. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security continue unchanged.

Paul Ryan became speaker of the House of Representatives in October 2015, the first month of the 2016 fiscal year. In the last fiscal year before Ryan’s speakership, the federal government ran a deficit of $438 billion. In the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2018, the last of his speakership and a year of general prosperity, that deficit rose to $779 billion. In the current fiscal year, the deficit is expected to amount to $981 billion. In fiscal 2020, the deficit will exceed $1 trillion—even assuming there is no recession that year.

 

The Self-Delusion of Paul Ryan
The speaker’s account of his tenure in office is at odds with observable reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/paul-ryans-congratulates-himself-twitter/578452/

[Martell Spy]

The Senate just passed criminal justice reform
Trump ran as “tough on crime.” But now he’s set to sign major criminal justice reform.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/18/18140973/first-step-act-criminal-justice-reform-senate-congress

Quote

 

The Senate on Tuesday passed a criminal justice reform bill in an 87-12 vote, overwhelmingly approving the biggest changes to the federal criminal justice system in decades.

The bill, known as the First Step Act, will take modest steps to alter the federal criminal justice system and ease very punitive prison sentences at the federal level. It would affect only the federal system — which, with about 181,000 imprisoned people, holds a small but significant fraction of the US jail and prison population of 2.1 million.

Essentially, the bill will allow thousands of people to earn an earlier release from prison and could cut many more prison sentences in the future.

 

 

[Fez]

6 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

The Senate just passed criminal justice reform
Trump ran as “tough on crime.” But now he’s set to sign major criminal justice reform.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/12/18/18140973/first-step-act-criminal-justice-reform-senate-congress

 

I think the House needs to vote again first, though I'm not positive of that.

Also, I'm surprised to see Murkowski among the 13 no votes, along with the usual dead enders. Sullivan is also a no vote though, and he's usually a safe bet to vote however senate GOP leadership votes. I wonder if there was something in the bill that the Alaskan tribes really did not like?

[Martell Spy]

41 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think the House needs to vote again first, though I'm not positive of that.

Also, I'm surprised to see Murkowski among the 13 no votes, along with the usual dead enders. Sullivan is also a no vote though, and he's usually a safe bet to vote however senate GOP leadership votes. I wonder if there was something in the bill that the Alaskan tribes really did not like?

Yes, correct, the House must vote. It appears Cotton is not as good as Sessions at blocking this.

[ThinkerX]

39 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think the House needs to vote again first, though I'm not positive of that.

Also, I'm surprised to see Murkowski among the 13 no votes, along with the usual dead enders. Sullivan is also a no vote though, and he's usually a safe bet to vote however senate GOP leadership votes. I wonder if there was something in the bill that the Alaskan tribes really did not like?

Murkowski's 'no' vote might stem from our 'SB 21,' commonly referred to here as 'catch and release' - effectively little or no punishment for many nonviolent crimes, hence no real deterrent from committing them a second time.  Around here, my quasi relatives and their friends have to contend with people stealing vehicles and B&E, getting caught, going before the judge, and then getting turned loose.  Quite a few are seriously agitated.  At a minimum, SB 21 requires major alterations.    

[The Marquis de Leech]

8 hours ago, Fez said:

My way too early rankings:

1) Colorado

2) Maine (though only if Collins retires, if she doesn't move this down 3 spots at least)

3) Arizona

4) Iowa (though only if Grassley retires, which I think he does)

5) Kansas (I think Roberts retires, but he's a really weak incumbent anyway, and Kansas suburbs are moving Democratic fast right now; a bunch of GOP state legislators have flipped parties despite it meaning going into the minority)

6) North Carolina (not an open seat, but far less red a state than Tennessee, and Burr is almost certainly going to win or lose or depending on if Trump wins the state).

7) Texas (not an open seat, and Cornyn is a stronger incumbent than Cruz, but this is where we find out if this year was a fluke, or a Beto only thing, or if Texas is truly changes).

8) Tennessee (or Georgia or Montana, all races that can't be considered solid red the way Wyoming can be, but that Democrats aren't winning.

I think Collins is in trouble even if she doesn't retire. After the Kavanagh thing, her moderate reputation is in tatters, and whomever runs against her is going to get a lot of financial support. Meanwhile, rural Maine chucked its Republican House incumbent this year, so it seems to be a state where Obama-Trump voters are actually switching back.

Of the others, I think you're too optimistic on Kansas. They'll vote for a Democratic Governor with a Republican super-majority in the legislature, but Senate? Kansas hasn't voted for a Democratic Senator since 1932. By contrast, I think you're too pessimistic on North Carolina (Democrats there are exceptionally angry and mobilised after the shenanigans of the Republican legislature), and Montana (the one red state that remains happy to elect Democrats in statewide contests. I think Montana flips before Texas).

[DMC]

1 minute ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

By contrast, I think you're too pessimistic on North Carolina (Democrats there are exceptionally angry and mobilised after the shenanigans of the Republican legislature), and Montana (the one red state that remains happy to elect Democrats in statewide contests. I think Montana flips before Texas).

North Carolina has demonstrated the GOP is pretty domineering with their voter suppression.  Looks like they just got caught, sure, but that ain't gonna change anything.  I agree that Montana is interesting, particularly if Bullock run as @The Great Unwashed suggested.