US Politics: What goes up, must come down!

[Liffguard]

4 minutes ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

What an idiot. Sanders gets to keep his purity and in the mean time we lose the House, Senate, Census, redistricting, courts, civil rights, environmental protection and democracy. Someone need to teach Bernie how to play chess.

I doubt it's only about purity. I suspect it's at least equally a strategic assessment that he gains more by staying on-message, maintaining consistency, and avoiding accusations of hypocrisy, than he gains from Bloomberg's financial help. Given how much of his message is in railing against billionaires and oligarchs, accepting funding from a billionaire would be something that could be exploited.

[Freshwater Spartan]

Nobody cares about consistency. This election is about winning and Sanders would rather fight then win.

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 minutes ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

Nobody cares about consistency. This election is about winning and Sanders would rather fight then win.

I wouldn't look at this as the end all of getting Bloomberg to help out - he could easily ask him to take whatever $ he was going to spend and dump it into tight down ballot races. 

[Stego]

15 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, that's entirely bullshit of the highest order.

Your lack of understanding of the last election cycle makes all of your statements now both laughable and useless.

You're an old man in a house fire complaining about flood waters.

[butterbumps!]

16 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Anybody ever get the feeling that the youth vote is so unreliable because Dems consistently nominate candidates with minimal youth appeal?  

I mean, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton didn't exactly inspire the youth.

Turnout in Nevada and NH was better than 2008, and NH had also passed a law since 2016 making voting in NH more difficult for college students.  

I had a very strong reaction to this initially, so I sat on it to mull over.   I ended up more frustrated.  Not with you but this attitude.

Fuck them and the horse they couldn’t bother to ride to the polls on.

For those without structural barriers to voting who have chosen not to because of candidates’ lack of youth appeal, they are kind of reaping what they’ve sown, and dragging a number of us down with them.   I don’t think this is so much a candidate problem as much as it is a youth problem.   Idk if it’s a failure to understand the cause and effect of how voting is the tool to produce certain outcomes or what, but I’m more frustrated than sympathetic to the choice not to vote due to a lack of sublime inspiration.  Which I say as someone who had Kerry for my inaugural vote.

And as was pointed out, even Obama with ostensibly major youth appeal didn’t get the kind of turnout that’s probably needed now to get Sanders over the finish line.

[A True Kaniggit]

20 hours ago, Ormond said:

I have already pointed out statistics where that show I agree that Simon is projecting his own situation onto others. But I'm sorry, for you to attribute his own situation to "poor life planning" is unwarranted and insulting and I think you should apologize to him. 

“Looks suspiciously at Simon's post and Jace's reply.”

From previous experience of @Jace, Basilissa 's posts, she wasn't actually condemning Simon with this. She was actually trying to show support in her own f***** up way. But she did it in a terrible way where the sarcasm/satire didn't shine through.

Am I right Jace? Or did I misread the situation. If I did let me know. Because then I must needs reply to you directly with a personally insulting post, that may result in my first warning points in over five years. 

(I need to start building a Prison Rep anyways)

[Fez]

57 minutes ago, butterbumps! said:

I had a very strong reaction to this initially, so I sat on it to mull over.   I ended up more frustrated.  Not with you but this attitude.

Fuck them and the horse they couldn’t bother to ride to the polls on.

For those without structural barriers to voting who have chosen not to because of candidates’ lack of youth appeal, they are kind of reaping what they’ve sown, and dragging a number of us down with them.   I don’t think this is so much a candidate problem as much as it is a youth problem.   Idk if it’s a failure to understand the cause and effect of how voting is the tool to produce certain outcomes or what, but I’m more frustrated than sympathetic to the choice not to vote due to a lack of sublime inspiration.  Which I say as someone who had Kerry for my inaugural vote.

And as was pointed out, even Obama with ostensibly major youth appeal didn’t get the kind of turnout that’s probably needed now to get Sanders over the finish line.

A few years ago I was talking to a younger cousin of mine, he was 19 at the time. The conversation turned to the upcoming election (I can't remember if it was 2014 or 2016) and I asked him if he was going to vote. He said he wasn't. He said that he figured that since us older folks had screwed up the world, it was up to us to fix it; he wasn't going to get involved.

It was one of the more frustrating experiences I have had.

[A True Kaniggit]

9 minutes ago, Fez said:

A few years ago I was talking to a younger cousin of mine, he was 19 at the time. The conversation turned to the upcoming election (I can't remember if it was 2014 or 2016) and I asked him if he was going to vote. He said he wasn't. He said that he figured that since us older folks had screwed up the world, it was up to us to fix it; he wasn't going to get involved.

It was one of the more frustrating experiences I have had.

“Both sides are the same”.

That’s what I hear most often. 

Mostly from people who only use the phrase as an excuse for their own lazy behavior.

If “both sides are the same”, then the onus isn’t on them to pay attention, do the research, and find out for themselves which is actually worse. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

On the topic of the Vox piece, we should take its conclusions seriously. But at the same time, in my opinion it isn't destiny. Like I said before, externalities can change the numbers, some opinions are still pliable, a week is a long time in politics.

The worry is making these sort of studies a self-fulfilling destiny. Republicans mostly ignored the polls in 2016 and went out and voted for their canddiate, Democrats should do the same.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

On the topic of the Vox piece, we should take its conclusions seriously. But at the same time, in my opinion it isn't destiny.

It's certainly not destiny.  Opinions will definitely change from now until November, and even with a 40,000 sample, there's still random error.  And yes, there's no reason to go a in hole and cry because of the findings - that's not the intent of Broockman and Kalla posting a quick write-up on Vox.  Sanders still has a decent chance at winning if for no other reason that Trump's approval is very weak for an incumbent and that's unlikely to change.

But, it's concerning, and the main finding - that Sanders will require record turnout from young voters in order to win - is very likely to be the case, and they're one of the least reliable demographic groups.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

A few years ago I was talking to a younger cousin of mine, he was 19 at the time. The conversation turned to the upcoming election (I can't remember if it was 2014 or 2016) and I asked him if he was going to vote. He said he wasn't. He said that he figured that since us older folks had screwed up the world, it was up to us to fix it; he wasn't going to get involved.

It was one of the more frustrating experiences I have had.

It always stuns me when I speak to someone under 30 who doesn’t vote. Two of the four issues that got me into politics, the environment and the national debt, are even worse now and doing nothing is spelling doom for their futures.

[lancerman]

4 hours ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

Nobody cares about consistency. This election is about winning and Sanders would rather fight then win.

If you ask Sanders supporters why they choose him over other progressives like Warren, often times you will hear "Bernie's been saying this stuff for 40 years". Yeah to alot of them his conistency matters. Sanders has a machine right now at the grass roots level. He's the only candidate besides Bloomberg who doesn't have a money problem. He doesn't need it. If Bloomberg wants to help he should go all in on the Senate races and spend all his money there

[lancerman]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It always stuns me when I speak to someone under 30 who doesn’t vote. Two of the four issues that got me into politics, the environment and the national debt, are even worse now and doing nothing is spelling doom for their futures.

You'd be so surprised how many people don't know a thing about politics.

[IheartIheartTesla]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

But, it's concerning, and the main finding - that Sanders will require record turnout from young voters in order to win - is very likely to be the case, and they're one of the least reliable demographic groups.

Well, yes. But there may be other opportunities including soft support for Trump among the Republican side and the Democrats who would vote for Trump. The other weakness of a national survey is how it plays out in the battleground states although the situation is probably worse than 2016 if Sanders gets a smaller popular vote.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

The other weakness of a national survey is how it plays out in the battleground states although the situation is probably worse than 2016 if Sanders gets a smaller popular vote.

With that type of sample, they probably could have broken it down by battleground states and estimated what it'd take to get to 270 ECs.  The reason they didn't - for the same reason they used a measure that overestimated youth vote - is because they were trying to give Sanders' support as much of the benefit of the doubt as possible - i.e. if the Dem nominee doesn't win the popular vote, they're very unlikely to win the EC.  This is inside baseball, but Brookman & Kalla are guarding against a type 1 error in terms of their statistical analysis.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, lancerman said:

You'd be so surprised how many people don't know a thing about politics.

No I wouldn’t. I’m the one who maintains that the average American is lazy, greedy and dumb. Just a few posts ago I highlighted that polls regularly find that a majority, and often a super majority, of Americans can’t even name the three branches of government. An overwhelming majority of American adults would absolutely bomb an intro to high school civics test if they had to take one right now.

[DireWolfSpirit]

5 hours ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

What an idiot. Sanders gets to keep his purity and in the mean time we lose the House, Senate, Census, redistricting, courts, civil rights, environmental protection and democracy. Someone need to teach Bernie how to play chess.

You don't any of that with certainty, yet you keep stating it as if it's cast in stone and should be everyone's foregone conclusion.

On the Eve of the 2016 GE did your crystal ball tell you Trump would beat Hillary? I doubt it, you were likely as fooled as everyone else.

We are still way too far out to say with any certainty who will win the November election and the down ballot races. 2016 taught us the msm general consensus should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially the "Sky is falling/Chris Matthews" type of prognosticators.

[Jace, Extat]

11 hours ago, Mexal said:

You know shits fucked up when people are advocating authoritarianism to drive a revolution and ignoring 2000 years of the same thing happening... dictator or monarch comes into power, friends of dictator or monarch prosper, everyone else suffers, people die, dictator or monarch rules until overthrown after countless atrocities. Yup, that’s the answer to our prayers. Bring it on. We deserve what we get.

I would like to clarify my own statement in response to this reasonable comment.

There are a lot more ways to have a democratic society than what we live in now. Despotism is probably the only way that any significant social or environmental changes would stick in America. One person with one vision who is empowered to do what is necessary, "representative" societies have been saved by such actions before. 

Trouble is, the amount of people who can be handed absolute power and then proceed to give it up when the crisis ends is... limited. We in America don't have a society that produces the kind of people who would do something for the greater good while being ambitious while also not turning into a tyrant and they probably need to be a genius or something too. We make ambitious people who say things like "I shouldn't have to pay taxes so that I can support my local orchestra!" 

 

So for my part, when I say something like "I would want a Despot," it's entirely academic to me because that person will never present themselves. I may not have responded to Ripp's comment with the seriousness it deserved and I think you made a great post Mexal.

For the record.

[Fez]

So basically we need another Cincinnatus or George Washington; a once-every-2000-years figure who has or is offered absolute power and voluntarily gives it up. 

No big deal. I'm sure we'll find someone.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

So basically we need another Cincinnatus or George Washington; a once-every-2000-years figure who has or is offered absolute power and voluntarily gives it up. 

No big deal. I'm sure we'll find someone.

Hah, I was in the middle of typing EXACTLY the same thing.  I'd like to volunteer myself for absolute power.  Most of you and yours will be fine.  Pinky swear.