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US Politics: Bounties from a Jericho Walk


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1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

And how the fuck do you expect a Dem to win in Kentucky if they're not Republican-lite?

Seriously, this bullshit about how Joe Manchin isn't a "real' Democrat gets real fucking old. You're right, she's not progressive. And you know what else? She won't vote to dismantle the ACA, which makes her way better than McConnell. Take the fucking wins you can get when you can  get them. 

Pretty much this. Would I greatly prefer to have Charles Booker in Washington? Absolutely. But that was never going to happen. If McGrath were to somehow pull off a miracle and beat Mitch, that would still be a HUGE improvement.

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16 minutes ago, MisterOJ said:

She just doesn't have much at all in the way of personality. But, she ticks off all the boxes that make her appear to be a Democrat candidate who should be able to win in Kentucky. She's former military and pretty moderate/conservative. And because she seems to be a good candidate on paper, she is great at raising money from establishment Democrats. But, to a large swath of the general public here, she comes across as wooden and just not very genuine.

 In her only other election, she lost in 2018 House of Representatives race pretty convincingly to Andy Barr, a seemingly beatable Republican incumbent. So, there's just a lot of belief that if she couldn't beat Barr, how in the world is she going to beat McConnell? 

Trust me, Mitch is *not* popular in this state at all. But, he's never been popular. I've been voting against him since 1994 - and it just doesn't matter what happens, he keeps getting elected.

Now, if McGrath were to somehow find a modicum of personality (and come out as convincingly anti-abortion) I'd give her a decent shot at beating McConnell. I don't think either of those things are likely to happen, so we will probably see yet another win for Mitch. Even with that against her, she still has a better chance at winning than Booker would have. I voted for Booker, but there is no way this state was going to elect a Black progressive Democrat to the Senate this year.

Interesting. I've actually thought she seems personable, but again, with limited exposure and lower expectations for politicians than most. 

And she really didn't lose that badly last time. Under five points to an established incumbent. Sometimes we have to fail before we can succeed, and she has nothing to hang her head about from 2018. 

McConnell is weak, despite all the advantages he should have. If Trump continues to sink, he may actually be one of the victims of that.

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17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Interesting. I've actually thought she seems personable, but again, with limited exposure and lower expectations for politicians than most. 

And she really didn't lose that badly last time. Under five points to an established incumbent. Sometimes we have to fail before we can succeed, and she has nothing to hang her head about from 2018. 

McConnell is weak, despite all the advantages he should have. If Trump continues to sink, he may actually be one of the victims of that.

Yeah, I think she lost to Barr by a little more than 3 points. Which would have been great in any of the other four Republican-held Kentucky congressional seats. But she was running against him in District 6, which is largely Lexington - Kentucky's second biggest city and one so progressive that they elected an openly gay mayor to multiple terms. Which, I know, may not seem like a big deal in some places, but in Kentucky - it is. (And she did beat that same mayor in the 2018 Democrat primary, so there's that.) If there was every a Kentucky district that was going to flip in the 2018 blue wave, it was that district. And it just didn't materialize with McGrath.

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More National polling to throw on the pile:

USA Today/Suffolk - Biden +12

Pew Research - Biden +10

 

Not that there was really any question what the polls are saying - the problem is it's still June.  But a lot of Trump's worst polling has been a bad few weeks and then a slow recovery back to the typical 42-44% approval.  We aren't seeing any signs of that yet, and the entire month of June has been abysmal for Trump's polls.  18 weeks to go before election day.

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Look, I can't even follow your logic, but I'm going to try. Are you saying their current strategy is so successful that Trump might drop out? That Biden has anything to do with this? It is very clear that this has nothing to do with Biden. They're hiding him. In fact, we're beginning to see Obama come out and take a more public stance than Biden. This is not a good strategy ever. If you've (presumably) elected the most electable candidate, then he should be out there being a leader. This is the Presidency he's running for, so him hiding, letting Trump self-destruct demonstrates a huge lack of leadership qualities. The Democrats are so confused about how to win, that they hide the top guy in the party who is trying to take back the presidency. Why on Earth would any campaign assume it's okay to just disappear? No matter the conditions? They should have thought about all possibilities and realized there were several reasons why their strategy sucks, but they can't seem to do that.

Now, all this "how are we gonna catch the never-Trumpers" BS is out the window if Trump resigns. They'll be able to vote for a regular Republican. Independents are back on the table, and when they hear Biden blustering about in a debate, they could very likely vote for someone else. And it being Pence is super unlikely as the Republican Party does not need a national convention to replace him, they can just vote by majority. Then you might get a Mitt Romney (who is fucking terrible but has been doing a lot to seem moderate) and Biden's in real trouble. Maybe it won't happen, but if it does, this is squarely on the shoulders of the Dems. 

A lot of people say Trump could face charges his first day out of office. If his chances of winning are so small, he could just resign before November and Pence could pardon him. There are so many reasons people are speculating on it. I don't know what Trump will do. Will his ego win out over fear of prison time? Who can say, but this could be disastrous. Biden needs to be out there yesterday demonstrating why we want to vote for him. 

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47 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Are you kidding me?

Not to dog pile, but a less than ideal Democrat who can win is always better than both some purist who will obviously lose or a Republican, even some of the good ones.

As I read more, I find McGrath to be an incredibly impressive person. Don't like her stance on firearms? She's ex military from a red state, of course she's not going to take a hard line stance on the issue, regardless of however she feels privately. An idiot would do that.

Oh, so she takes a more moderate tone on issues, even if she largely agrees with you, and BTW, from what I can read lost because she made some rural voters uncomfortable. Strategy, it's a nice thing, and sometimes you have to change your talking points if that's the difference between winning and losing. And all that matters in her race is getting her the win, even if you wished she was more liberal or whatever. Seeing a less than perfect Democrat beat a Republican is still better than seeing the Republican win. With a couple exceptions.
 

48 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Seriously, this bullshit about how Joe Manchin isn't a "real' Democrat gets real fucking old. 

This may be my one exception to the rule, even if I will wish him good luck in his campaigns.
 

And I try to not say I hate people and things.

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13 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

This is the Presidency he's running for, so him hiding, letting Trump self-destruct demonstrates a huge lack of leadership qualities.

There's a marked difference between "hiding" and allowing your opponent to self destruct.  Particularly when your opponent is the incumbent, and has quite obvious self-destructive qualities and behavior, and especially when you can't actually physically campaign anyway.

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4 hours ago, MisterOJ said:

I don't know. It might be true. Things are crazy right now (and may change before November). Like, there is no redder state than here in Kentucky. I'm not sure if there is a state where Trump has been more popular than Kentucky. (There probably is, but Kentucky has to be top 4-5 Trumpiest states there is.)

But, we are just today getting the results from our mainly mail-in primary that was held last Tuesday. And one of them shocked me. In the GOP presidential primary there was just two options on the ballot - Trump and "uncommitted."  In Fayette County (the second most populous county in the state) 28 percent of the Republican voters chose "uncommitted" rather than vote for Trump. This isn't an open primary. Democrats and Independents don't get to vote for GOP nominations and over a quarter of Republicans were like, "No. Not Trump." I'm kinda amazed to see that here.

That is somewhat surprising and heartening. On the other hand, I sort of would expect that within Kentucky Fayette County would be the most likely place for this to happen since it's the seat of the University of Kentucky. Lexington should be particularly full of the sort of highly educated Republican voters that would be most likely to be anti-Trump. Was there any other county in Kentucky that came close to this percentage of "uncommitted" in the primary?

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2 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I couldn't say the same for the rest of the state, but to me, up here in "reddish" northern Wisconsin, it still feels anecdotally like Trump has a chance at winning at least our county. 

The brainwashing is strong up here, HillBills gonna Hillbilly and all.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of Wisconsin politics, but its weird around Milwaukee because when you're in the collar counties around the city, you can never really tell where people stand as you talk to them.  

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10 minutes ago, DMC said:

There's a marked difference between "hiding" and allowing your opponent to self destruct.  Particularly when your opponent is the incumbent, and has quite obvious self-destructive qualities and behavior, and especially when you can't actually physically campaign anyway.

It also calls into question what the point of campaigning is.  Isn't it to help win the election and get your message out?  Well, Biden's platform is fairly clear and widely available to anyone who wants to know.  He is doing TV and radio interviews every day.  He is doing some limited meetings and events where he can ensure everyone's safety.  This all sounds very prudent to me.  

In addition, it is totally working.  Biden's lead in national polls was ~5 points when Sanders dropped out on April 8.  It was 6 points on May 1.  It's 9 points now.  If Biden were suddenly running against a Republican party united behind Mitt Romney he might be in trouble, but who the hell cares?  He's running against Trump, and by any normal standard, the campaign is going very well.  

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10 minutes ago, Ormond said:

That is somewhat surprising and heartening. On the other hand, I sort of would expect that within Kentucky Fayette County would be the most likely place for this to happen since it's the seat of the University of Kentucky. Lexington should be particularly full of the sort of highly educated Republican voters that would be most likely to be anti-Trump. Was there any other county in Kentucky that came close to this percentage of "uncommitted" in the primary?

When I posted that earlier today, Fayette was the only one I'd heard about - and it was just from a tweet from a political reporter I follow. I've since looked through the other results and it was by far the largest. Jefferson County (which is Louisville) had the second highest percentage at 22 percent. 

Other high ones included Woodford County (suburban Lexington) at 20 percent, Oldham County (suburban Louisville) at 20 percent, Scott County (suburban Lexington) at 18 percent, Franklin County (Frankfort) at 18 percent, Campbell County (suburban Cincinnati) at 17 percent, Jessamine County (suburban Lexington) and Warren County (home of Western Kentucky University and the state's third largest city) at 16 percent.

The statewide average was a little over 13 percent. All the other Louisville/Lexington/Cincinnati suburbs like Boyle County, Boone County and Bourbon County were all slightly over that average too. As you might expect, the more rural counties were all in the single digits.

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51 minutes ago, MisterOJ said:

Yeah, I think she lost to Barr by a little more than 3 points. Which would have been great in any of the other four Republican-held Kentucky congressional seats. But she was running against him in District 6, which is largely Lexington - Kentucky's second biggest city and one so progressive that they elected an openly gay mayor to multiple terms. Which, I know, may not seem like a big deal in some places, but in Kentucky - it is. (And she did beat that same mayor in the 2018 Democrat primary, so there's that.) If there was every a Kentucky district that was going to flip in the 2018 blue wave, it was that district. And it just didn't materialize with McGrath.

Well again, outsider who has only read a bit about it, but Barr won his previous two election bids by 20 points, more or less. Cutting that to such a small margin is not the sign of a bad candidate. And like I said before, from what I can find without actually doing real work is that she just screwed up in a few places. Maybe a better candidate, if you had one, could have won that, but still I don't think she can be described as having done a bad job.

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50 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is ridiculous.  She may be way too moderate for your tastes, but what the hell is a Trump Democrat?  She actively disagrees with Trump on almost all main issues - other than guns.  I agree she appears to be a pretty milquetoast candidate that is very (very) unlikely to win, but let's not conflate moderate Dems with Trumpism.  That's how your party loses.

That is not me branding her that, she has repeatedly painted herself as a pro-Trump Democrat.

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not to dog pile, but a less than ideal Democrat who can win is always better than both some purist who will obviously lose or a Republican, even some of the good ones.

As I read more, I find McGrath to be an incredibly impressive person. Don't like her stance on firearms? She's ex military from a red state, of course she's not going to take a hard line stance on the issue, regardless of however she feels privately. An idiot would do that.

Oh, so she takes a more moderate tone on issues, even if she largely agrees with you, and BTW, from what I can read lost because she made some rural voters uncomfortable. Strategy, it's a nice thing, and sometimes you have to change your talking points if that's the difference between winning and losing. And all that matters in her race is getting her the win, even if you wished she was more liberal or whatever. Seeing a less than perfect Democrat beat a Republican is still better than seeing the Republican win. With a couple exceptions.

I know I come across as an ideologue on here, in part because this isn't real life so I can be, but I'm actually pretty pragmatic in practice. I know that a Democrat is better than a Republican, but I think that there is an element of fatalism when it comes to Democrats running in red states. If all you do is run right wing Dems in those states, you are never going to move the state closer to the center. All you're doing is reinforcing the idea that both parties are basically the same, and in my opinion are actually hurting yourself.

Polls in the last week or so were actually showing Booker performing better than McGrath against McConnell, so it is not like putting up a conservative Dem actually guarantee a better outcome.

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Every hour that deathcultchief remains in the WH spells more death, and many more years before the US ever comes back from this economic disaster he has made.  If ever the US will recover, that is.

Climate catastrophe is still playing its Olympic gold medal game to destroy everything.  More pandemics are in the offing, and the only way to avoid those, though nobody wants to say it, is for the planet to stop eating meat.  Which isn't going to happen until ... nobody can afford meat any longer.

We must demand right now with one voice that he and all his people be  removed right now to save ourselves.

 

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11 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

That is not me branding her that, she has repeatedly painted herself as a pro-Trump Democrat.

Please cite.  And please not just this:

Quote

"If you think about why Kentuckians voted for Trump, they wanted to drain the swamp, and Trump said that he was going to do that," McGrath said during the announcement of her candidacy on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "Trump promised to bring back jobs. He promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians. And that is very important."

 

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Every hour that deathcultchief remains in the WH spells more death, and many more years before the US ever comes back from this economic disaster he has made.  If ever the US will recover, that is.

Climate catastrophe is still playing its Olympic gold medal game to destroy everything.  More pandemics are in the offing, and the only way to avoid those, though nobody wants to say it, is for the planet to stop eating meat.  Which isn't going to happen until ... nobody can afford meat any longer.

We must demand right now with one voice that he and all his people be  removed right now to save ourselves.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Every hour that deathcultchief remains in the WH spells more death, and many more years before the US ever comes back from this economic disaster he has made.  If ever the US will recover, that is.

Climate catastrophe is still playing its Olympic gold medal game to destroy everything.  More pandemics are in the offing, and the only way to avoid those, though nobody wants to say it, is for the planet to stop eating meat.  Which isn't going to happen until ... nobody can afford meat any longer.

We must demand right now with one voice that he and all his people be  removed right now to save ourselves.

 

Can you just refer to him by name? Its proper cringe, nobody else is doing it, and it's making you sound really daft.

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Just now, BigFatCoward said:

Can you just refer to him by name? Its proper cringe, nobody else is doing it, and it's making you sound really daft.

Think they can call him what they please, and if it's something you cringe over, just put them on ignore.

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41 minutes ago, DMC said:

Please cite.

Welp, I could have sworn I had seen somewhere that she had, but clearly I was wrong. I know she has done the whole "I can work with them" thing which is probably where that attack came form, but that is something that is entirely expected.

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Every hour that deathcultchief remains in the WH spells more death, and many more years before the US ever comes back from this economic disaster he has made.  If ever the US will recover, that is.

Climate catastrophe is still playing its Olympic gold medal game to destroy everything.  More pandemics are in the offing, and the only way to avoid those, though nobody wants to say it, is for the planet to stop eating meat.  Which isn't going to happen until ... nobody can afford meat any longer.

We must demand right now with one voice that he and all his people be  removed right now to save ourselves.

 

Obviously anyone the Dems put in charge of the EPA (probably going to be my dude Jay) and the like are going to be a significant upgrade from Trump and Co, but do you really think that the Democratic party is truly committed to do what has to be done? While they may not have the rabid support for polluters that the Republicans have, they are still at the forefront of reminding you to turn your lights out and recycle while they're doing the bare minimum. I'm just a pessimist though.

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