US Politics: Vaguely above average Tuesday

[mcbigski]

7 hours ago, Mauvka said:

If Biden goes with Buttigieg, that would be a big F*** You to the progressives in the Democratic Party, and I would certainly interpret such a choice as an indicator that Biden intends to run and govern without the party's left wing.  More so than any of the other moderate candidates, Buttigieg ran a campaign of attacking the policy ideas of the more liberal candidates.

AOC seriously reminds me of the Governor of Harlan's World (Altered Carbon Season 2). 

I think the progressive wing would be quite pleased with a President Buttigieg.  Total red diaper baby.  His father was a Gramsci hagiographer.  

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I don’t care about Sanders-Trump voters. I care about the Sanders voters who stayed home. Hillary literally needed a 0.001% increase in turnout over three states to become president. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that a protracted, devises primary costed her that.

.001%?  Did you misplace a decimal place?  Or using 'literally' according to Biden style book.  (Where it's clear from context he means figuratively, but emphatically anyway?).  Trump won Wis and Penn by .7%.

[Jace, Extat]

4 hours ago, Isabel said:

You do realise the damage another 4 year trump will do to your country?

You can kiss the supreme court goodbye, perhaps dictatorship, non functional bureaucracy  etc.

My neighbor's boyfriend believes and reiterated to me yesterday that it's better for Trump to beat Biden because... some insane shit about how Biden "not doing enough" on climate change (dude can't explain Bernie's environmental policies) is worse than Trump actively making it worse and therefore Trump winning allows for a "real Democrat" to win in 2024... or something. It's all very unclear and I've heard this pitch like 6 times.

I keep telling this story because I keep having these people around me. They exist. They are real. They are not folks who belong in the Democratic party because they don't want to be part of it. They can go fuck themselves with their ridiculousness and idiotic notions of being a liberal vanguard. Being a Bernard Fan doesn't make you a "real Democrat". It makes you associate with assholes that nobody likes. And a fucking loser, besides. This Motherfucker can't get votes and that's the fault of the actual Democratic voters? Nah, get the fuck out with that shit. Bernie wasn't a Democrat until he wanted a path to power. Maybe that's why the "establishment" (is there anything more juvenile than railing against the "establishment"?) (Oh wait, insistence on infantile nicknames like "rethugs," "bedbug," or "faux news" in post after post after post is pretty fucking juvenile) don't like him. 

 

 

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Simon,

And when these voters choose not to come out and vote how are they disenfranchised?  Bernie is losing because his “coalition” isn’t showing up at the polls.  Or do you believe there is some scheme to hand the nomination to Biden?

The ESTABLISHMENT bro!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

My neighbor's boyfriend believes <snap>

Short summary. Jace intends to steal her neighbour's bf and start the revolution of the real democrats.

I think that's pretty much the message of that post.

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

My neighbor's boyfriend believes and reiterated to me yesterday that it's better for Trump to beat Biden because... some insane shit about how Biden "not doing enough" on climate change (dude can't explain Bernie's environmental policies) is worse than Trump actively making it worse and therefore Trump winning allows for a "real Democrat" to win in 2024... or something. It's all very unclear and I've heard this pitch like 6 times.

I'm fairly sure i got promised this in 2016 at least once.  It doesn't feel like it's going well.

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Short summary. Jace intends to steal her neighbour's bf and start the revolution of the real democrats.

I think that's pretty much the message of that post.

Shit. I, uh, hadn't thought of that.

You know Bernie can't hang on forever, and I could...

No! Dammit! I'm a democrat (small d). I have an ideology and stuff! I can't set that aside for dreams of....

"Revolution" you say...?

[Stego]

21 minutes ago, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

I'm not talking about the military I'm talking about the military industrial complex. Some soyboy SJW named Dwight Eisenhower gave speech warning about it like a bajillion years ago that's proven remarkably prophetic.

 

I'm familiar with the idea. 

You're also talking about the cocksucker that gave us Korea and the Truman Doctrine. His policies led to Vietnam, which he personally endorsed with his boys JFK and Lyndon Johnson. (Across the aisle, no less!)

Do we have graft and corruption? Sure.

Is a strong defense more important than literally ANYTHING else? Of course. 

Wall Street runs Washington. The Military Industrial Complex is just getting their cut.

 

 

[Stego]

19 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

My neighbor's boyfriend believes and reiterated to me yesterday that it's better for Trump to beat Biden because...  is worse than Trump actively making it worse and therefore Trump winning allows for a "real Democrat" to win in 2024

This is just logic.

Your neighbor's boyfriend understands the long game and you don't.

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, Stego said:

This is just logic.

Your neighbor's boyfriend understands the long game and you don't.

That's 1 liberal and perhaps as many as 3 Supreme Court seats (2 of them liberal) the boyfriend is willing to cede to Trump. That's ~20-40 years of the Supreme Court shutting down pretty much anything progressive.

The guy's an idiot, not an impeccable thinker. 

[OldGimletEye]

11 hours ago, Ran said:

That's 1 liberal and perhaps as many as 3 Supreme Court seats (2 of them liberal) the boyfriend is willing to cede to Trump. That's ~20-40 years of the Supreme Court shutting down pretty much anything progressive.

The guy's an idiot, not an impeccable thinker. 

It's depressing how much smarter and determined conservatives are, when it comes to taking the supreme court, than are liberals.

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

We spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined, most of which are allies and none of which are enemies.

It's important to have a strong defense. What is not important is to have a military that can engage in countless interventionist boondoggles.

And some of the elites on both sides love their interventionism.

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Stego said:

You're also talking about the cocksucker that gave us Korea and the Truman Doctrine.

Dwight Eisenhower was responsible for the Truman Doctrine?  That's...anachronistic.  George Kennan's Long Telegram (and corresponding essay in Foreign Affairs) is largely responsible for the Truman Doctrine, and Kennan lived for another half century to regret it.  And the Korean War ended (well, reached an armistice, it still hasn't technically ended) seven months after Eisenhower took office.  I think you have him confused for Truman.

[Kalbear]

Quote

The biggest impediments to voting are lack of time, work obligations, the belief that a vote is worthless, and laziness.

Washington State has all of these.

If Washington state voters - who by the way had more than 2 million people vote in the Democratic primary, which is more people than voted for Clinton in total in 2016 - do not have the time to fill out a fucking ballot, that is a bigger problem. Similarly, if they cannot find time over a three week period to fill out two questions on a ballot and mail it for free, that is a very serious problem.

[argonak]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

If Washington state voters - who by the way had more than 2 million people vote in the Democratic primary, which is more people than voted for Clinton in total in 2016 - do not have the time to fill out a fucking ballot, that is a bigger problem. Similarly, if they cannot find time over a three week period to fill out two questions on a ballot and mail it for free, that is a very serious problem.

The ballots were a little weird this year.  You had to pick a party on the same envelope where you sign, rather than on the ballot itself.  Seemed very odd to me.

[Kalbear]

12 minutes ago, argonak said:

The ballots were a little weird this year.  You had to pick a party on the same envelope where you sign, rather than on the ballot itself.  Seemed very odd to me.

It was. That was a compromise to the caucus wanters to try and 'force' people into a pseudo-closed primary. A lot of people didn't like it at all. But it's a LOT better than the caucus was, and the turnout so far is kind of phenomenal. 

In other news we are waiting on an emergency declaration from Trump (which the state of Washington desperately needs in order to get certain supplies and restrictions lifted) because...Jared Kushner has to finish his book report or some bullshit.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It was. That was a compromise to the caucus wanters to try and 'force' people into a pseudo-closed primary. A lot of people didn't like it at all. But it's a LOT better than the caucus was, and the turnout so far is kind of phenomenal. 

In other news we are waiting on an emergency declaration from Trump (which the state of Washington desperately needs in order to get certain supplies and restrictions lifted) because...Jared Kushner has to finish his book report or some bullshit.

 

 

Cut him some slack. He's working on a Middle East peace plan.

Yeah, I admit, I was lazy this time. I usually drop my ballot off at the public library, as it feels more secure than mailing it. I mailed before work this time to save me that huge trip down the library after work. Took about 10 seconds. 5 seconds to fill it out. What really slows you down with voting is when there is a bunch of minor judge races and you don't know who the hell these people are and you have to do research just to make sure you aren't voting for a Nazi or the like.

[Frey family reunion]

32 minutes ago, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

We still have troops in Germany from the end of WWII (I think Hitler's good and dead by now).

Well to be fair, they are probably not the same troops.  Those guys are probably dead or at least retired.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

There's a lot to be done for sure.

When you say this, do you just mean largely rhetorically or policy specific, because you must know that the latter’s end result will be rather similar whether it’s Biden or Bernie? And that’s what I can’t wrap around my head. I like Bernie more than Biden just like I liked him for than Clinton in ’16, but I have no delusions that he’d get anything done.

3 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Which was imo the reason why Sanders stayed in the race for as long as he did last time, so he could get the max leverage out of his position and got to push her further to the left policy wise.

Perhaps, but it also led to a loss of civility, and to me that was obviously going to be difficult to heal, especially when you consider that many Sanders supports aren’t reliable Democrats. Plus, by this time in ’16, wouldn’t most of the movement already have occurred? I’ve never seen an empirical study on it, but iirc, didn’t Clinton move to the left before the voting even started?

Quote

That's why I am not holding that against Sanders. And otherwise I agree with DMC I think him staying in the race had very little to do with HRC's defeat. Unless you assume her platform was too progressive to win.

Tricky thing is, because the margin of loss was so small, you can cherry pick what you want to blame. Clinton ran a bad campaign in the Midwest. Comey totally screwed her in the final days. Sexism, etc. I was just highlighting back then that a protracted primary could damage the ability of voters to rally together, and that was made all the harder by having a disliked nominee with a lot of baggage.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

.001%?  Did you misplace a decimal place?  Or using 'literally' according to Biden style book.  (Where it's clear from context he means figuratively, but emphatically anyway?).  Trump won Wis and Penn by .7%.

I worded that poorly. What I was saying is that if Clinton had gotten 0.001% more votes in total, and if those votes were correctly spread throughout WI, PA and MI, she would have won. I know that’s not the best way to calculate it, but I wanted to do it that way to highlight just how slim the margins were.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

What I was saying is that if Clinton had gotten 0.001% more votes in total, and if those votes were correctly spread throughout WI, PA and MI, she would have won.

This still doesn't make sense.  0.001% of the total votes - 136,669,276 - is still only 1367 votes.  I think you're just bad at math, or not accounting for the fact 1 percent itself is still multiplying by .01.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

This still doesn't make sense.  0.001% of the total votes - 136,669,276 - is still only 1367 votes.  I think you're just bad at math, or not accounting for the fact 1 percent itself is still multiplying by .01.

It would appear that adding an extra 0 would be problematic. Whoops