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U.S. Politics: Huff and Puff the Socialism away


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3 hours ago, DMC said:

Millennials and Gen Z are significantly more left leaning than previous generations ever were.  Yes, the comparative extremism of young right-wing voters is concerning (if not downright scary), but the generational advantage for the left among anyone born after 1980 is the best either party has had in the history of polling.

It's not too difficult to envision a future where the left is able to wrest back control based on better numbers overall where the right is both more acutely aware of being in demographic decline and more extreme.  If that should turn out to be the case the potential for both more right wing terrorism and more of a state response to crack down on it isn't too hard to see.

Of course, maybe Trump will end elections before that and pass the crown on to Don Jr.  Baron might be future Emperor of America.  Wonder if he realizes that yet.  

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3 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I get called by pollsters of various stripes quite often.  What irked me is that much of the time, I was stuck with their range of answers, not the ones I wanted to give.  Also, the overwhelming majority of these calls come over landlines - something most younger people no longer bother with, hence a fair possibility of distortion on that account.  (several times the past year or two, I've taken these calls, been asked my age, and then told 'my demographic was already represented' - which says something about the lists used by the polling outfits.)  I also note there have been multiple complaints and comments here about how polls for certain races and regions have been either mishandled or are seriously obsolete. 

Oye, this is enough bullshit I have to speak up.  First, no, while some pollsters still use landlines, literally no reputable poll only - or "overwhelmingly" - uses landlines anymore.  That's just factually wrong.  Second, no, almost all reputable firms account for race, region, religion, what have you as best they can.  Are there errors?  Sure.  But not nearly to the extent you're implying.  Third, the "range of answers" is quite scrutinized before it gets asked to a respondent.  Don't shit on my people, they're doing their best.  And, frankly, have a damn good record lately if you actually looked at polls' accuracy recently.

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6 hours ago, maarsen said:

Those moving out of small towns tend to be more open minded, hence the urge to leave the parochial small town. I spent enough time in small towns to know that small towns equal small minds.

I've lived in both large and small and that hasn't been my conclusion

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9 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

True.

Yet it works, at least some of the time.  Most of a year before it happened I predicted Trump would not only be the republican candidate, but had an excellent chance of defeating Clinton - predictions which were ignored or ridiculed here, almost right up to the election.

We've discussed this before, but here you're simply falling for a common fallacy: judging validity by outcome. 'I used this unscientific method to predict a result and it came true, therefore the unscientific method is reliable and valid'. That doesn't follow. I could have tossed a coin to predict whether Clinton or Trump won and got 'heads' for Trump. Coin tossing definitely works 'at least some of the time'. But that doesn't mean coin tossing has any real value as a predictive tool. 

Look, we'd all love to think we're the sort of insightful, clever people that can instinctively ferret out valid trends from anecdotal information. It's tempting. Right now my Twitter timeline is full of left-wingers telling stories about how their experiences on the doorsteps show the polling data is misleading: it's the same problem. We need to step back sometimes and check ourselves. 

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17 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Meaning they are moving into the urban centers to make them more red, as well as those left behind are becoming even redder and not turning more blue. Is the rural count ever going to get so low that they don't have their own congressional representative, in states that have one or more exclusively rural+small town(s) district?

I'm not sure the first part is true. The people who move out of rural areas into cities may be precisely those people who are less "red" and therefore feel more comfortable moving to the city. I can think of two instances where people I know moved or are soon to move from small rural towns to larger cities after retirement. One of my old college roommates and his wife moved from Hartsville, South Carolina to Chicago while a friend who's a college professor in Hastings, Nebraska is planning to move to Omaha in a few months when she retires, and all of them are very "blue" voters. And I would bet that young people who leave rural areas for opportunities in the big city are also "bluer" than the young people who stay behind. 

P.S. And there is some research support for the idea that people are more likely to move to places that fit in with their own political preferences.

 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532673X10396303

Perhaps DMC can tell us whether other research by political scientists generally supports the idea that those who leave rural areas are less conservative than those who stay behind. 

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6 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I've lived in both large and small and that hasn't been my conclusion

Preferring to live in small towns seems to be a self selection process. Those that want to experience more than what  is on offer in a small place tend to gravitate to a bigger space thus leaving behind those that feel uncomfortable with interacting with strangers on a daily basis.

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7 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Preferring to live in small towns seems to be a self selection process. Those that want to experience more than what  is on offer in a small place tend to gravitate to a bigger space thus leaving behind those that feel uncomfortable with interacting with strangers on a daily basis.

There are probably multiple factors correlated with each other that contribute to this. Those who "feel comfortable" interacting with strangers are more likely to get a college education. The college education both then tends to increase "liberalism" on social issues and give people the skills and income that make it more feasible for them to find good jobs and be able to afford to live in urban centers.

My idea that even retirees who move into cities from rural areas are more "blue" would be very connected to the facts that those who can afford to make such a move would tend to have more education than average, and so be able to afford the move. Poor retirees would be those who can't afford to move into urban areas. This of course exacerbates the health and death rate differences between rural and urban areas that ThinkerX has linked to. When retirees do move from one place to another, one of the major factors they are looking for in choosing a new community is access to good health care. 

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11 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Something not mentioned about rural areas and declining population is discussed here in detail:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/us/opioid-crisis-high-school-teenagers.html?

"... small towns depopulated by opioid addiction, suicide and drunk driving."

alas, all three are present in my area.  Driving for the 'van service' a dozen years back was an eye-opener; almost a parallel reality of halfway houses, clinics, and treatment centers - and it's only gotten worse.  

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Something not mentioned about rural areas and declining population is discussed here in detail:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/us/opioid-crisis-high-school-teenagers.html?

"... small towns depopulated by opioid addiction, suicide and drunk driving."

Paywalled for me.   Many rural areas are greatly lacking in opportunity, and the associated poor conditions can lead to addiction.  But a part of me wonders if its not just "working as intended" for the people who control these regions.  keep the people dumb (defund schooling), gullible (push organized religion), and addicted to their drug of choice, and they're easily controlled.  It has worked pretty well for Russia for the last few centuries anyway.

Its much easier to sell people snake oil than to a solution to their problems.  Both for the salesman and the consumer.  

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36 minutes ago, argonak said:

Paywalled for me.

What you're saying isn't applicable to what the article covers.  As the link also informs us, it's about how opioids hit a particular high school class, grad date 2000, and what they did in the four years from 1995 on, to those particular kids.  It wasn't about adults looking for pain management or employment opportunities.  It was kids, kids attending sports events, and all the other typical h.s. activities.

The Big Pharma people responsible for this should all be in prison and paying enormous fines and their corps dismantled.

Along with the Juul folks.

 

 

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7 hours ago, Zorral said:

Something not mentioned about rural areas and declining population is discussed here in detail:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/02/us/opioid-crisis-high-school-teenagers.html?

"... small towns depopulated by opioid addiction, suicide and drunk driving."

 

7 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

alas, all three are present in my area.  Driving for the 'van service' a dozen years back was an eye-opener; almost a parallel reality of halfway houses, clinics, and treatment centers - and it's only gotten worse.  

Would it be insensitive to cynically say: No wonder the right is so concerned about the opioid epidemic, it's killing their voter base.

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Would it be insensitive to cynically say: No wonder the right is so concerned about the opioid epidemic, it's killing their voter base.

No problem! Bedbug's awarded a major contract to build THE WALL to a North Dakota Huge Donor.  All voter problems resolved.

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3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Would it be insensitive to cynically say: No wonder the right is so concerned about the opioid epidemic, it's killing their voter base.

It would be hugely insensitive. It's reasonably accurate, but a more accurate statement is that when white people in the US have issues with substances they get treatment and support and blame the manufacturers. When black people do, they lock up the black people. This has little to do with the right and a lot more to do with the US in general; there's a reason that Clinton and Biden were very hardcore on crime and why that resonated with Democrats and Republicans. 

Because in general, Democrats and Republicans are quite happy to agree to lock up minorities.

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29 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

100% absolutely true slogan South Dakota spent time and tax payers money on to symbolize their effort to fight their meth problem:

https://media.graytvinc.com/images/810*502/sdmeth-logo-tan.jpg

Saw that on twitter. 

My immediate thought was "man, Walter White picked the wrong state!"

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