US Politics: Mail and Managers for Mitch

[Maithanet]

15 minutes ago, Fez said:

Whereas Kansas is a much more Republican state. Yes it just elected a Democratic governor in 2018, but as we've seen over and over, its still possible for Governors to get pretty significant cross-over votes that are unthinkable in other elections. Trump won the state by 21%, about the same as Romney got in 2012. And there's no Democratic voting tradition right now; Republicans have an 84-41 majority in the state house and a 29-11 majority in the state senate. Republicans have a 5-1 congressional delegation majority.

I am pretty pessimistic about Democrats winning a Senate seat in Kansas in a presidential election year.  If it were a special election it would be different, but Trump's coattails in Kansas will be very strong.  My quick assessment of the Senate would be as follows:

Weak Democratic advantage (Dems ~ 60% chance) - CO, AZ

Weak Republican advantage (Dems ~ 40% chance) - ME

Strong Republican advantage (Dems ~ 20% chance) - NC, GA, IA, AL

Not completely out of the question (Dems ~10% chance) - TX, KS, AK, maybe a couple others depending on the primaries

So, in conclusion, it's a bad map, albiet not quite so bad as 2018.  The Democrats need to win at least one of GA/NC/IA/AL to take the majority, and those are all going to be very hard.  It is almost impossible to make a scenario where Democrats take the Senate without winning the Presidency and CO and AZ.  ME is probably needed, although it isn't totally required. 

[A True Kaniggit]

42 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm not Scot, but I bring up the Fugitive Slave Act (which trampled on northern states rights for the purpose of preserving slavery) and the Declarations of Independence that the various states themselves wrote, which unambiguously point to slavery as the primary reason for them leaving the union.  Not that this convinces everyone (nothing will), but I've never encountered even a halfway decent counterargument. 

See, I try to use arguments that aren't too complicated for the people I'm trying to convince. The 2 current modes of convincing are: (gonna abbreviate here)
 

1) You're not special: You know how we live in the south, the place that liked to own other people? Now when the rest of the country tells us we're racist, and that we are wrong, doesn't it make more sense that they are telling the truth, instead of some insane conspiracy where the south is right about it being about state's rights, even though we were the idiots that thought it was a good idea to own other people?

2) Parents of serial killers:  You know how the parents of serial killers are always saying, "My baby would never do this, he was framed, he was set up"?

But we all know that the parent is only trying to protect themselves from the truth? 

That's what you, your parents, grandparents have been doing. It's hard to admit that your family is racist as shit. But the sooner you figure out your ancestor's have been passing down a lie to protect themselves from a hard truth,  the sooner you'll quit being racist as shit.

 

Edit: I have to use simple terms. If I try to bring up "Acts" or "History" or "Charts", apparently I'm talking down to them.

[Fez]

9 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I am pretty pessimistic about Democrats winning a Senate seat in Kansas in a presidential election year.  If it were a special election it would be different, but Trump's coattails in Kansas will be very strong.  My quick assessment of the Senate would be as follows:

Weak Democratic advantage (Dems ~ 60% chance) - CO, AZ

Weak Republican advantage (Dems ~ 40% chance) - ME

Strong Republican advantage (Dems ~ 20% chance) - NC, GA, IA, AL

Not completely out of the question (Dems ~10% chance) - TX, KS, AK, maybe a couple others depending on the primaries

So, in conclusion, it's a bad map, albiet not quite so bad as 2018.  The Democrats need to win at least one of GA/NC/IA/AL to take the majority, and those are all going to be very hard.  It is almost impossible to make a scenario where Democrats take the Senate without winning the Presidency and CO and AZ.  ME is probably needed, although it isn't totally required. 

I'm slightly more optimistic, though I agree its a rough map to get four seats out of. I think the odds in a Colorado are a bit better than that, maybe 75%, and I'd probably put North Carolina at about 40% as well. 

Also, both Georgia seats up this year because there's a special election to fill the last two years of Isakon's seat. I'd probably put Perdue's seat at that 20% level, but the special election maybe at 30%. The GOP appointee, Loeffler, is not popular, and it looks like there's going to be a nasty primary on their side; the kind that can lead to bad blood.

[Maithanet]

23 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I have to use simple terms. If I try to bring up "Acts" or "History" or "Charts", apparently I'm talking down to them.

I do struggle with coming across as talking down to people, so I'm probably not the best resource here.  But I feel like the declarations of independence thing is fairly straightforward.  I always like the line "these are Americans we're talking about, so OF COURSE they're all gonna write their own declaration of independence."  I suppose it's possible they won't believe you that this is what the documents say (it's not like you have the documents with you).  But those declaration documents are pretty clear, they don't mince words, they mention slavery over and over. 

For example, here's South Carolina's, which is only like a page long, and mentions slavery 18 times!

16 minutes ago, Fez said:

I'm slightly more optimistic, though I agree its a rough map to get four seats out of. I think the odds in a Colorado are a bit better than that, maybe 75%, and I'd probably put North Carolina at about 40% as well. 

Also, both Georgia seats up this year because there's a special election to fill the last two years of Isakon's seat. I'd probably put Perdue's seat at that 20% level, but the special election maybe at 30%. The GOP appointee, Loeffler, is not popular, and it looks like there's going to be a nasty primary on their side; the kind that can lead to bad blood.

It's a simplistic chart.  Yes, I think CO is probably more like 70%, although really AZ is probably closer to 50 than 60%, although it's above 50.  NC is probably higher than 20, but 40 sounds too high.  I think Tillis is popular enough that there's no way he loses if Trump wins NC, and I could see a scenario where Trump loses NC narrowly and Tillis holds on.  The GA seat I rate at 20% is the open seat, I think Purdue is more like 10%.  The only way Purdue loses is if Trump loses GA, and it's going to take a really really bad election to have that happen. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Jesus. I’ll get back to the other quotes later, but this cannot be allowed to stand without a retort:

15 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Andrew Wiggins is definitely coming around, bro.

New England sports teams have been overwhelming for two decades. Which is the reason why?: 
 
A. Cheated a lot in the first decade. 
B. Cheated a lot in the second decade. 
C. New England political dynasties cheat too, so what? 
D. All of the above.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Just for the sake of pendantry how can there be "hookers" in a society with no cash and everything is jointly owned by everyone (recognizing that people can't be owned anyway)? How can anyone gamble when everything is jointed owned?

Simple: Greed. Even in a society built around abundance, some people will always want more. I can’t think of a social construct that some people haven’t sought to exploit, and I expect it wouldn’t work any differently here.

[DanteGabriel]

18 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Jesus. I’ll get back to the other quotes later, but this cannot be allowed to stand without a retort:

New England sports teams have been overwhelming for two decades. Which is the reason why?: 
 
A. Cheated a lot in the first decade. 
B. Cheated a lot in the second decade. 
C. New England political dynasties cheat too, so what? 
D. All of the above.

E. We'ah just wicked awesome

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

E. We'ah just wicked awesome

So awesome that your lot was voted as having the best accent in the country.

Translation: ya’ll know you have the worst in the country so you went heavy on the fan vote.

Proof of evidence: Tacko Fall is a leading All-Star vote getter, which is just absurd, like your accent.

(And before you come at ours, just know that the accents from Fargo were meant to be a joke. Nobody here sounds like that except some people in the rural sticks. That’s a Canadian accent, so attack the BIRD! If you need to)

[Tywin Manderly]

Quote

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump is adding three seasoned lawyers to his impeachment legal defense team, people familiar with the matter said, including Kenneth Starr, the hard-charging prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Alan Dershowitz, the constitutional lawyer, and Robert Ray, Starr's successor at the Office of Independent Counsel during the Clinton administration, are also joining the team, the people said.

Link to news article.

I wonder what quid pro quo for those lawyers would be...  (Aside, of course, from a pile of cash.)

[DanteGabriel]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So awesome that your lot was voted as having the best accent in the country.

Translation: ya’ll know you have the worst in the country so you went heavy on the fan vote.

Proof of evidence: Tacko Fall is a leading All-Star vote getter, which is just absurd, like your accent.

(And before you come at ours, just know that the accents from Fargo were meant to be a joke. Nobody here sounds like that except some people in the rural sticks. That’s a Canadian accent, so attack the BIRD! If you need to)

Okay, the real answer to your previous question is that they had people perform in the clutch.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Okay, the real answer to your previous question is that they had people perform in the clutch.

 

My step-father literally yelled out “We’re gonna win” just before the kick.

Don’t be shocked if Walsh changes his gender and attempts to commit murder.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Sorry. @Ser Scot A Ellison for quoting a random post of yours  to get your attention.

But I was wondering, as a fellow southerner, how you convince others that the Civil War was actually about slavery, and not about State's Rights.

The methods I've been trying haven't been working as well as I've hoped.

Well, in a simplistic fashion you can simply ask what right was it that State's were fighting to preserve? 

More concretely and with more depth the reason Lincoln's election was fighting words for the Southern elite was the perception that Lincoln's election was a threat to the elite's power base which was based on slavery.  Lincoln, throughout the campaign, made clear he had no intention of attacking slavery where it already existed he only wanted to prevent Slavery's expansion into the territories.

Had no war started and had Lincoln been successful that would mean that the Southern States would have lost the veto their 50% control of the US Senate provided as new, non-slave holding, States were brought into the Union.  That illustrates that the threat to the elite Southerner's power is why they drove their States to secede from the Union so that they could preserve their existing power structure that was based on Slavery.

I also make clear that Slavery wasn't the only issue in the American Civil War.  However, it is absolutely the one issue that drove the Southern Elite to behave as it did.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Trump is tweeting support for Sanders, which leads me to believe he must have some internal polling data that suggests he can beat Sanders. handily (or he got a look at the opposition research). At the same time, the Ukraine scandal occurred because he was worried about Biden's chances.

I dont know if the above holds though. No matter how good the internal pollster, there is still tremendous uncertainity in the outcomes.

[Fragile Bird]

11 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Administration was bullshitting on the Iran missile retaliation. There were 11 US casualties. CNN link.

Bah, don't be silly. The big news was thatk there were no deaths. All of these are brain related injuries, concussive type injuries that likely didn't show up for days, long after the Defence department announced "no apparent casualties". Once they started to show up, they likely decided to wait and see how many woud show up.

[Maithanet]

I think that Trump is just trying to stir shit in the Democratic primary.  If Sanders loses, his supporters are likely to be very disgruntled (probably more so than supporters of other candidates).  Trump knows that dissatisfaction in the Democratic electorate was a key reason why he was able to win the election with 46% of the vote when Romney lost with 47%. 

I'm not sure this particularly means that he thinks Sanders will be easy to beat, I think it just shows that Trump is going to be working to foster disunity and resentment in the Democratic party.  He'd laugh with glee if this thing went to the convention (which is well within reason). 

[Fragile Bird]

I had completely forgotten that Ken Starr's ethics adviser resigned from his position on the Clinton impeachment team because Starr did so many unethical and outright illegal things.

eta, lol, the WH team was announced today and former Florida AG Pam Bondi is one of them. Lev Parnas immediately tweeted a picture of him with Bondi. Great trolling!

[IheartIheartTesla]

Dershowitz has also joined the impeachment trial team. He is supposed to be this towering intellect, but being from the sciences I have no way of judging (so was Scalia, maybe them legal folks have a different way of defining intellect). Anyway, since he also defended Epstein and OJ, I am going to assume that means Trump is guilty.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Dershowitz has also joined the impeachment trial team. He is supposed to be this towering intellect, but being from the sciences I have no way of judging (so was Scalia, maybe them legal folks have a different way of defining intellect). Anyway, since he also defended Epstein and OJ, I am going to assume that means Trump is guilty.

The legal community is weird. One person’s argument can sound brilliant to one crowd and completely ridiculous to another. For example, I think the textualists/originalists are completely idiotic, but their theories are very popular in the conservative legal community.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The legal community is weird. One person’s argument can sound brilliant to one crowd and completely ridiculous to another. For example, I think the textualists/originalists are completely idiotic, but their theories are very popular in the conservative legal community.

Why is "textualism" idiotic? 

If the text used in a foundational document is unimportant to its interpretation and use why does the text exist as anything more than a suggestion anyway?  Shouldn't that give you pause when thinking of important civil rights protected and defined in text?  Without textualism any foundational document is essentially written in sand.

[IheartIheartTesla]

This is an old debate and one that wont be decided here, but the constitution was written at a different time and its text reflects realities of those times (similar to many religious texts). Myself and others find ludicrous the ways those original words are interpreted in a modern context. "Pork is bad" for instance was probably good advice for times where food hygiene was terrible, but makes less sense today.

Thats probably a superficial analysis but also the gist of it.