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US Politics: Flaming the Flamenco Flamingo


Fragile Bird

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17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Because that's been the trend, and 2018 was an outlier relative to the trend. It's possible that 2018 was a new trend, but I'll take the previous 8 data points over one. 

Well, the Philadelphia Inquirer in February seemed to say that long term trends for statewide elections in Pennsylvania have been going toward the Democrats (though the state like the nation is becoming more polarized between rural "red" and urban "blue") and that the 2016 election there was the outlier.

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/inq/pennsylvania-polarization-election-results-democrats-republicans-trends-map-20190207.html

Must get something else done with my day so don't have time right now to find articles about WI and MI.

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15 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Open question for anyone because I really just don't know enough. If the House were truly representational and didn't have it's numbers capped, would it change EC outcomes? Like if California had a bajillion EC votes and Montana had 1, would we still be seeing large disparities between popular and EC results?

Yes, I think that would be a great start towards making the EC less a broken mess. Because of the arbitrary and nonsensical cap on the number of House reps, there is more variance in the number of constituents per rep (because you have to have at least 1 per state, and then there are only 385 left to be split around according to population. And because the EC is number of reps+senators, with less reps, the effect of the 2 senators per state is magnified. So right now, the EC is 538 with 270 needed to win. 19% of the EC is allocate per-state rather than per-population. If the HoR doubled in size (frankly a conservative increase given the population growth since it was fixed at 435 a f'ing *century* ago), the EC would be 973 with 488 needed to win, and only 10% would be allocated per-state rather than per-population.

Winner-takes-all and the entire EC itself are not an ideal system, but changing the size of the HoR is something that I think should get a lot more attention, because it would make our system more democratic and has the huge, huge upside of not requiring any constitutional amendments (the size cap was implemented via Congress and can be changed via Congress). And it benefits not only elections but also the act of governing itself.

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2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Because that's been the trend, and 2018 was an outlier relative to the trend. It's possible that 2018 was a new trend, but I'll take the previous 8 data points over one. 

Uh, what previous 8 data points exactly?  Let's look at the past 7 presidential election cycles since 1992, as well as all Senate elections since then which will be 10 elections in each state except Michigan (9).

Florida:  1992 – R 1.9%; 1996 – D 5.7; 2000 – EVEN (..let’s just say even); 2004 – R 5.0; 2008 –  D 2.8; 2012 – D 0.9; 2016 – R 1.2

Class 3 Senate:  1992 (Graham [D] after one term) – D 30%; 1998 – D 25; 2004 (Martinez [R] wins open seat) – R 1.1; 2010 (Rubio wins open seat) – R 19.2; 2016 – R 7.7

Class 1 Senate:  1994 (Mack [R] after one term) – R 41%; 2000 (Nelson wins open seat) – D 4.8; 2006 – D 22.2; 2012 – D 13.0; 2018 – R 0.1

I suppose you could see a bit of a trend here – especially with Nelson losing last year.  But that obviously had a lot to do with candidate quality.  Other than that, there’s not much to point to – the presidential election is a crapshoot, and the Senate is dependent on candidates and the environment at the time (which will almost certainly be a theme throughout this exercise).

Michigan:  1992 – D 7.4%; 1996 – D 13.2; 2000 – D 5.1; 2004 – D 3.4; 2008 – D 16.4; 2012 – D 9.5; 2016 – R 0.2

Class 1 Senate:  1994 (Abraham [R] wins open seat) – R 9.1%; 2000 – (Stabenow defeats Abraham) – D 1.6; 2006 – D 15.6; 2012 – D 20.8; 2018 – D 6.5

Class 2 Senate:  1996 (Levin [D] after three terms) – D 18.5%; 2002 – D 22.7; 2008 – D 28.9; 2014 (Peters wins open seat) – D 13.3

Not really seeing much of a trend here at all – especially considering Peters won the open seat by 13 in 2014, which was a bad year for congressional Dems.

Pennsylvania:  1992 – D 9.0%; 1996 – D 9.2; 2000 – D 4.2; 2004 – D 2.5; 2008 – D 10.3; 2012 – D 5.4; 2016 – R 0.6

Class 3 Senate:  1992 (Specter [R] after two terms) – R 2.3%; 1998 – R 26.5; 2004 – R 10.7; 2010 (Toomey wins open seat) – R 2.0; 2016 – R 1.5

Class 1 Senate:  1994 (Santorum [R] wins first term) – R 2.5%; 2000 – R 6.9; 2006 – (Casey wins first term) – D 17.3; 2012 – D 9.1; 2018 – D 13.1

Definitely no trends in the presidential – other than 2016, obviously.  The Senate actually looks better for Dems recently.

Wisconsin:  1992 – D 4.3%; 1996 – D 10.3; 2000 – D 0.2; 2004 – D 0.4; 2008 – D 13.9; 2012 – D 6.9; 2016 – R 0.8

Class 3 Senate:  1992 (Feingold [D] wins first term) – D 6.6%; 1998 – D 2.1; 2004 – D 10.2; 2010 (Johnson wins first term) – R 4.9; 2016 – R 3.4

Class 1 Senate:  1994 (Kohl [D] after one term) – D 17.6%; 2000 – 24.5; 2006 – 37.8; 2012 (Baldwin wins open seat) – D 5.5; 2018 – D 10.9

Here I guess you could say the presidential has gone down from 2008 to 2016, but that’s again just pretty much based on the 2016 result.  In the Senate there’s clearly no trend.

Overall, I don’t see how you can look at these data and conclude these states are trending GOP.  If anything, the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin only serve to reinforce the notion the Dems have built-in advantages in statewide contests – unless you’re solely counting 2016, which plainly is the outlier here.  I agree that Florida looks to be trending a bit red lately, but it’s hardly a lost cause.

So..again, what exactly are these 8 data points you're referring to Obi-Wan?

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33 minutes ago, nah said:

This is obviously a bit divorced from reality, but if we had like, a reset button, we'd really make more sense as five different countries, culturally speaking. The Northeast being its own thing, the South being its own thing, the West Coast being its own thing, the Midwest being its own thing, and the Southwest being its own thing.

Sooner than you think. 

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Of course the DHS groups anti fascists into the same group as violent white supremacists. I expect nothing less from a fascist organization that uses Nazi like rhetoric by calling this the Homeland. 

 

There is no saving this shitheep of a system through reform. Tear it down. 

All law enforcement agencies need to be flat out abolished. There are no good law enforcement agents or cops.

 http://www.fox26houston.com/news/white-nationalism-is-now-recognized-as-a-major-terror-threat-by-the-department-of-homeland-security

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18 hours ago, Triskele said:

Sounds like Booker's campaign is close to done.  I still find it a bit baffling that he's getting so little support from Dem voters.  

He doesn't stand out in terms of ideas, he's not particularly likable and I suspect if people took a closer look at his pharmaceutical money and the shenanigans of his subordinates while he was mayor of Newark, he'd be in trouble. The field is too crowded with more interesting candidates for him to get much support.

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12 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Yeah I just don't buy any arguments that Mi, Wi,  and Penn. are future bastions of red. It feels more like 2016 was the anomaly and a huge mistake they all are now owning. They will self correct in 2020.

 

Someone should tell Elizabeth Warren RIGHT NOW that PA has over a million Puerto Rican residents -- who can and will vote.

Last POTUS campaign I screamed at the hotel tv in Lancaster, PA during the D-Con that she hadn't done a bit of outreach to this population of voters.  Lancaster that weekend was running their now annual Latino Fiesta that lasts a week.  There are a lot of other latinos living in PA besides Puerto Ricans.

Was at a weekend Puerto Rican academic conference this weekend and they are fired up.  Nobody's forgotten the paper towel event.  They are feeling even more insulted than they did at the moment.

 

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35 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Someone should tell Elizabeth Warren RIGHT NOW that PA has over a million Puerto Rican residents -- who can and will vote.

Last POTUS campaign I screamed at the hotel tv in Lancaster, PA during the D-Con that she hadn't done a bit of outreach to this population of voters.  Lancaster that weekend was running their now annual Latino Fiesta that lasts a week.  There are a lot of other latinos living in PA besides Puerto Ricans.

Was at a weekend Puerto Rican academic conference this weekend and they are fired up.  Nobody's forgotten the paper towel event.  They are feeling even more insulted than they did at the moment.

 

Permanent residents of Puerto Rican descent or Puerto Ricans temporarily staying in PA? Because the latter is useless and not worth the time.

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This reporter from 'down under' might have a point - just completely stop cleaning up his speeches prior to broadcast:

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-foreign-journalist-lenore-taylor-garbled-syntax-vocabulary-press-conference-054719614.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_15

 

Lenore Taylor, a voracious follower of U.S. news who has covered politics for nearly 30 years, thought she had an inkling of Trump’s rambling, disjointed speech. But without the veil of careful editing and paraphrasing around his words by the American media, his actual presentation was startling, she wrote in a column in The Guardian. “Much [of] the reporting of Trump necessarily edits and parses his words, to force it into sequential paragraphs or impose meaning where it is difficult to detect,” she noted.

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43 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

This reporter from 'down under' might have a point - just completely stop cleaning up his speeches prior to broadcast:

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-foreign-journalist-lenore-taylor-garbled-syntax-vocabulary-press-conference-054719614.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=2_15

 

 

 

I'll do that one better, just completely quit giving the piece of shit anymore free airtime. He's an assault on humanities sense's.

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13 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I'll do that one better, just completely quit giving the piece of shit anymore free airtime. He's an assault on humanities sense's.

that won't happen, his acts being news and all.

 

not cleaning up his commentary at all prior to broadcast, though....now that might be feasible.  Probably prompt some serious howls from the right, though

 

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4 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

that won't happen, his acts being news and all.

 

not cleaning up his commentary at all prior to broadcast, though....now that might be feasible.  Probably prompt some serious howls from the right, though

 

STOP TAKING HIS WORDS IN CONTEXT

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2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Permanent residents of Puerto Rican descent or Puerto Ricans temporarily staying in PA? Because the latter is useless and not worth the time.

They live there.  They are residents.  They have been going there a long time.  Puerto Ricans leaving the island tend NOT to go to Florida, but to NY, NJ and PA.

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4 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

All law enforcement agencies need to be flat out abolished. There are no good law enforcement agents or cops.

The problem with that is once there's no law enforcement, what's to stop all the ex-cops from starting up new gangs that don't have to even pretend to care about the rights of the general public? While you're right that there are massive problems with the existing system, a viable solution would have to be more complicated than just getting rid of the lot.

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8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

They live there.  They are residents.  They have been going there a long time.  Puerto Ricans leaving the island tend NOT to go to Florida, but to NY, NJ and PA.

Hmm, sounds like a constituency worth visiting to me. Although one could understand (not forgive) the inclination to assume the individuals in question would vote against their declared enemy, the unfortunate reality is that liberally aligned demos demand personalized pandering. 

So I agree, if the situation is as you describe then Warren should reach out to these persons.

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Could somebody explain to me a story that's been going around the news lately?

So I've been hearing the terms Ukraine, whistle blower and Biden thrown together in a story that I have not grasped what's going on.

I've heard suggestions on the American right about opening up investigations against Joe Biden for this issue while those on the progressive side are saying there should be consequences on Trump for raising this issue to begin with.

OR am I getting two unrelated news stories mixed up here? 

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1 minute ago, Ordos said:

Could somebody explain to me a story that's been going around the news lately?

So I've been hearing the terms Ukraine, whistle blower and Biden thrown together in a story that I have not grasped what's going on.

I've heard suggestions on the American right about opening up investigations against Joe Biden for this issue while those on the progressive side saying there should be consequences on Trump for raising this issue to begin with.

OR am I getting two unrelated news stories mixed up here? 

Donald Trump's undead attorney Rudy Gulliani visited the Ukranian president and bartered for 'dirt' on Joe Biden's son. Monstrously illegal and Gulliani admitted he was going to do it in like April so it can't be a crime.

Nothing will come of it, just another in a long line of horrific examples that this country can no longer function. I wouldn't get too worked up.

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21 minutes ago, Ordos said:

Could somebody explain to me a story that's been going around the news lately?

So I've been hearing the terms Ukraine, whistle blower and Biden thrown together in a story that I have not grasped what's going on.

I've heard suggestions on the American right about opening up investigations against Joe Biden for this issue while those on the progressive side are saying there should be consequences on Trump for raising this issue to begin with.

OR am I getting two unrelated news stories mixed up here? 

Biden's son Hunter did business in Ukraine in the past, (working for a gas company or something, IIRC) back when it was led by a corrupt Russian puppet and had a culture of corruption.

Ever since Biden announced his bid for the presidency there have been rumors that Trump and company were trying to push Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden to use against him. The newest breaking story is that an Intelligence official turned whistleblower and reported it because Trump more or less directly told Ukraine's new president that Trump would refuse to turn over the military aid and goods that had been purchased unless Ukraine gave him something to use against Biden. (Presumably made up shit would suffice.) If Ukraine doesn't do that, they can say goodbye to the supplies they need to keep Russian forces and separatists from breaking off more of their country.

So you have a president trying to extort and essentially blackmail a foreign leader into interfering in U.S. politics/elections, while saying that America will refuse to follow through on the commitments it made to other countries or the fact that Congress passed that and the president isn't supposed to be able to effect it at all besides vetoing it or deciding how to carry it out.

Republicans are muddying the waters by trying to throw the whole thing onto the Biden family, because I guess if Hunter Biden engaged in the culture of corruption that was endemic in Ukraine that would be be bad for Joe... somehow. Or they're trying to suggest that Joe was connected to all of that even though reviews at the time showed that there was no improper action or contacts between Joe and Hunter. But they gotta deflect somehow, and try to turn it around on someone else.

ETA: Oh, and the report of exactly what the whistleblower said has been kept form Congress, even though the law says, plainly and unambiguously, that it needs to be turned over to Congress for oversight reasons should the Inspector General deem that it is legit and serious, which the IG has done and signed off on. Judging by statements made, this is being done at the insistence of Trump and Attorney General Barr, again despite the law and despite both Trump and Giuliani pretty much admitting to the call having happened. (After they denied it first, of course.)

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