US Politics: He's so indicted, he just can't abide by it...

[Spockydog]

23 hours ago, Raja said:

Can someone please do something about this brown man, I'm ashamed. I promise you will have no idea where his line of thinking goes in this clip

Why does he have bits of plastic hanging out of his ears? He looks like an idiot. 

[Gorn]

15 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I'm becoming more and more convinced that parliamentary democracies where there is no elected Executive is a significantly better way to run things for a variety of reasons, and one of the biggest ones is that it gives the party significantly more power and a popularity contest significantly less. Smoke-filled rooms have their own problems, mind you - elites choosing who you vote for can miss significant trends and tend to be more reactionary and conservative as a rule. 

Also, to comment on this: historically, two different parliamentary democracies produced both Mussolini and Hitler. A parliament is far easier to manipulate by a would-be dictator than an electorate with millions of unpredictable people.

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Why does he have bits of plastic hanging out of his ears? He looks like an idiot. 

He's being fed lines/information is the best bet. Anyways the dude is an idiot. He gave a VEEP level interview on Meet the Press a little bit ago. 

[Zorral]

After 15 years of the rats controlling the state judiciary --

Wisconsin Supreme Court flips liberal, creating a ‘seismic shift’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/wisconsin-supreme-court-liberal/

Quote

 

MADISON, Wis. — Standing in the marble-lined rotunda of the state capitol this month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s incoming justice raised her right hand, swore to carry out her job “faithfully and impartially” and launched a new, liberal era on a powerful court long dominated by conservatives.

The fallout was immediate.

Within days, the new majority stripped duties from the court’s conservative chief justice and fired its administrative director, a conservative former judge who once ran for the court. The abrupt changes prompted the chief justice to accuse her liberal colleagues of engaging in “nothing short of a coup.” Before long, Republican lawmakers threatened to impeach the court’s newest member.

Liberal groups, long accustomed to seeing the court as hostile terrain, quickly maneuvered for potential victories on a string of major issues. They filed lawsuits to try to redraw the state’s legislative districts, which heavily favor Republicans. And the Democratic attorney general sought to speed up a case challenging a 19th-century law that has kept doctors from providing abortions in Wisconsin.

“It’s an absolute seismic shift in Wisconsin policy and politics,” said C.J. Szafir, the chief executive of the conservative, Wisconsin-based Institute for Reforming Government. “We’re about to usher in a very progressive state Supreme Court, the likes that we have not seen in quite some time. And it’s really going to change how everything operates.”

The turnaround on the Wisconsin court is the result of an April election that became the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with campaigns and interest groups spending more than $50 million.

At stake in that race, with the retirement of a conservative justice who held a decisive vote on a 4-3 court, was the question of who would make crucial rulings in a swing state that could decide the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Conservatives had controlled the court for 15 years, during which they upheld a voter ID law, approved limits on collective bargaining for public workers, banned absentee ballot drop boxes and shut down a wide-ranging campaign finance investigation into Republicans.

Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, won by 11 points and flipped control of the court to give liberals a 4-3 majority when she was sworn in on Aug. 1. Protasiewicz, who declined interview requests, spoke openly during her campaign about her support for abortion rights and opposition to what she called “rigged” maps that have given Republicans large majorities in the state legislature. Political strategists said her blunt style helped her win even as court observers fretted that she was making judges look like politicians instead of evenhanded referees.

The tensions surrounding the Wisconsin court reflect the state’s political importance nationally and the increasingly partisan nature of a system in which candidates who vow to be impartial arbiters of the law are chosen by voters in heated political campaigns. Justices are directly elected by voters in 21 states and they must stand for retention elections after being appointed in another 17.

Across the country, deadlocked statehouses and all-or-nothing politics have given state supreme courts more power and often put them in charge of determining election outcomes and abortion policies. The changeover on the Wisconsin Supreme Court comes less than a year after conservatives took over the top court in North Carolina and strengthened their hold on the one in Ohio. In North Carolina, the new majority acted swiftly, handing Republicans victories by reversing decisions the court had made just months earlier on voter ID and redistricting.

Conservatives for decades had the upper hand in supreme court races in key states by fielding judges and prosecutors as candidates, sharpening tough-on-crime messages and securing the support of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Republicans. But in recent years, liberals in Wisconsin have recruited candidates with similar backgrounds and seized on popular political themes. The state Democratic Party, meanwhile, has poured millions of dollars into what are ostensibly nonpartisan races.

The strategy culminated in Protasiewicz’s victory and elicited cheers from liberals across the country. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Protasiewicz would “protect democracy as the state’s newest Supreme Court justice.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hailed her victory as a “HUGE night for the progressive movement.” And Vice President Harris said Wisconsin voters had “stood up for abortion rights” by electing Protasiewicz. ....

 

By the way, this new liberal majority of Wisconsin's State Supreme Court includes FOUR women now -- all of whom support adamantly women's right to choose. The women of WI evidently did vote in the new Justice.  That women care so much about reproductive medical rights, rights that only affect WOMEN  -- who knew?

Edited August 27, 2023 by Zorral

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

And lost, making the adage you are referring to, uh, correct.

I don't see how. Increasing turnout in general wasn't why Trump lost. 

 

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I don't see how. Increasing turnout in general wasn't why Trump lost. 

 

65 million people voted for Clinton, 81 million voted for Biden. Clinton beat Trump by 2.1% in popular vote, Biden beat Trump by 4.5% in popular vote. Clinton lost, Biden won.

I don't see how you can say that increasing turnout didn't help Democrats win.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

65 million people voted for Clinton, 81 million voted for Biden. Clinton beat Trump by 2.1% in popular vote, Biden beat Trump by 4.5% in popular vote. Clinton lost, Biden won.

I don't see how you can say that increasing turnout didn't help Democrats win.

Because most of Bidens extra vote was in places that didn't matter. 

Because the president doesn't get elected by popular vote.

What mattered specifically was a combination of increasing DEMOCRATIC voters in Arizona, Georgia, and the upper Midwest while also suppressing republican voter turnout in those areas. That didn't happen because of general voter turnout, however.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

It’s okay to label people who make headlines like these immoral.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Varysblackfyre321

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Because most of Bidens extra vote was in places that didn't matter. 

Because the president doesn't get elected by popular vote.

What mattered specifically was a combination of increasing DEMOCRATIC voters in Arizona, Georgia, and the upper Midwest while also suppressing republican voter turnout in those areas. That didn't happen because of general voter turnout, however.

 

First, there are no places that "don't matter". The difference in winning California by 5% or by 20% is whether it sends 30 or 40 Democrats to the House. If more people turned out in New York in the last congressional election, the House would have remained Democratic. Dividing the electorate into "places that matter" and "places that don't matter" makes otherwise smart people to believe in idiocies like "blue walls", which leads to lost elections.

Second, there was no "suppressed republican voter turnout" in the states you listed, you pulled that out of your ass. In every single state, Republicans turned out more voters in 2020 than they did in 2016. Democrats won by turning out way more of their voters, because high general voter turnout favors Democrats.

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Second, there was no "suppressed republican voter turnout" in the states you listed, you pulled that out of your ass. In every single state, Republicans turned out more voters in 2020 than they did in 2016. Democrats won by turning out way more of their voters, because high general voter turnout favors Democrats.

Which is exactly WHY those people who call themselves by the moniker 'rethug' do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO REPRESS VOTER TURNOUT AND VOTING.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

First, there are no places that "don't matter". The difference in winning California by 5% or by 20% is whether it sends 30 or 40 Democrats to the House.

No, that's not how it works at all. 

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

If more people turned out in New York in the last congressional election, the House would have remained Democratic. Dividing the electorate into "places that matter" and "places that don't matter" makes otherwise smart people to believe in idiocies like "blue walls", which leads to lost elections.

When you're talking about the presidency that's still a reasonable thing. And yes, it still very much matters where you get the turnout - AND, more importantly, it matters in turning out YOUR voters.

For a long time there was this idea that simply increasing turnout overall would help Democrats, and that is just not accurate. Furthermore upthread (and why I brought this up) there was this idea that increasing turnout in primaries would actually moderate said primary candidates. None of that is true. 

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

Second, there was no "suppressed republican voter turnout" in the states you listed, you pulled that out of your ass. In every single state, Republicans turned out more voters in 2020 than they did in 2016. Democrats won by turning out way more of their voters, because high general voter turnout favors Democrats.

There was less Republican voter turnout as a percentage of the vote than there was in 2016. More accurately there were fewer people who voted pure Republican across the ticket than there were in 2016 compared to the overall amount of voters. This is why we got a number of split-ticket victories in those states. 

Republicans turned out more voters than they did in 2016 - that's entirely accurate. And more importantly Trump got a higher percentage of the vote than he did in 2016. How you can use those values while also saying how it favors democrats is a very odd statement. Here's another weird thing - 2016 also had high turnout compared to many other elections; who won? Did it favor Democrats? I'm pretty sure the answer is no. 

Another way to put it is this: 2020 had a Democrat winning the POTUS election by roughly 30k votes across three states. That really isn't that much. And that was not because of a generally higher overall turnout, especially in places like Georgia. 

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

Which is exactly WHY those people who call themselves by the moniker 'rethug' do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO REPRESS VOTER TURNOUT AND VOTING.

They don't, however. They do so in specific places and counties. The voting lines in Georgia are fine in the suburbs and in rural areas; they suck in cities. Same is true in Texas, where they specifically went after Houston and left most of the other counties alone. 

They also target specific populations with certain types of voting restrictions. Polling times, polling places, ID laws - all of these are more likely to disadvantage minority and poorer urban populations. There's a reason that you can use your NRA membership as valid ID but not a library card. 

[Gorn]

10 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

No, that's not how it works at all.

Ticket-splitting is a very rare thing these days. A voter who shows up to vote for a D president will most likely also vote D in all or most of down-ballot races. A large turnout of D voters in a "state that doesn't matter" will push toss-up congressional races over the edge, help elect Democrats on the local level, and help progressive ballot initiatives get passed. Also, voting is a habit, and those people are more likely to show up to vote in a non-presidential-election year.
 

Quote

 

When you're talking about the presidency that's still a reasonable thing. And yes, it still very much matters where you get the turnout - AND, more importantly, it matters in turning out YOUR voters.

For a long time there was this idea that simply increasing turnout overall would help Democrats, and that is just not accurate. Furthermore upthread (and why I brought this up) there was this idea that increasing turnout in primaries would actually moderate said primary candidates. None of that is true. 

 

As I said, presidential elections don't exist in a vacuum.
 

Quote

 

There was less Republican voter turnout as a percentage of the vote than there was in 2016. More accurately there were fewer people who voted pure Republican across the ticket than there were in 2016 compared to the overall amount of voters. This is why we got a number of split-ticket victories in those states. 

Republicans turned out more voters than they did in 2016 - that's entirely accurate. And more importantly Trump got a higher percentage of the vote than he did in 2016. How you can use those values while also saying how it favors democrats is a very odd statement. Here's another weird thing - 2016 also had high turnout compared to many other elections; who won? Did it favor Democrats? I'm pretty sure the answer is no. 

Another way to put it is this: 2020 had a Democrat winning the POTUS election by roughly 30k votes across three states. That really isn't that much. And that was not because of a generally higher overall turnout, especially in places like Georgia. 

 

2016 election was unusual due to a super-high third-party vote. In a two-party system, that's the same as staying home or writing in Mickey Mouse. When you take just the Republican vs. Democratic vote ratio, Trump's vote share went from 48.88% (when compensated for third-party vote) to 47.71% (again, when compensated for third-party vote). Trump's vote percentage in relation to his Democratic opponent shrunk.

I still don't understand why you mention Georgia as a place where general voter turnout didn't matter. R votes went from 2,089,104 to 2,461,854. D votes went from 1,877,963 to 2,473,633. Both sides reached a bunch of new voters, but Democrats reached significantly more.

And I agree that the margin is too close for comfort.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Gorn

[Zorral]

Former president Donald Trump’s D.C. federal trial is scheduled for March 4, 2024, Judge Tanya Chutkan announced -- one day prior to the Super Tuesday primaries.

You do the delay, you pay ... he's already delayed this trial 9 months.  So if he thinks he's effed re fascist primaries, etc., it's his own fault.  Like all of it is his own fault all his gd life.

All weekend he's been bawling bout not being able to leave the country for the PGA in Scotland because, you know, indicted.  Scotland, however, seems not to be weeping re his absence.

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Zorral

[Mindwalker]

Apparently, his lawyers put on quite a show, yelling "miscarriage of justice"  and generally being rude to the judge.

[Zorral]

17 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Apparently, his lawyers put on quite a show, yelling "miscarriage of justice"  and generally being rude to the judge.

That's what they are (not) getting paid for!

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

Ticket-splitting is a very rare thing these days. A voter who shows up to vote for a D president will most likely also vote D in all or most of down-ballot races. A large turnout of D voters in a "state that doesn't matter" will push toss-up congressional races over the edge, help elect Democrats on the local level, and help progressive ballot initiatives get passed. Also, voting is a habit, and those people are more likely to show up to vote in a non-presidential-election year.

Ticket splitting happened very frequently in the 2020 election. It might be rare, but it's occurring right now. 

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

As I said, presidential elections don't exist in a vacuum.

If what you said was true you would expect that the 2020 election would have a massive democratic house advantage - certainly similar to 2018. Instead it was one of the most narrow majorities in recent history. 

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

2016 election was unusual due to a super-high third-party vote. In a two-party system, that's the same as staying home or writing in Mickey Mouse.

So...turnout in general doesn't actually matter?

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

When you take just the Republican vs. Democratic vote ratio, Trump's vote share went from 48.88% (when compensated for third-party vote) to 47.71% (again, when compensated for third-party vote). Trump's vote percentage in relation to his Democratic opponent shrunk.

So yes, if you ignore the numbers that don't fit your narrative they tend to do better. 

3 hours ago, Gorn said:

I still don't understand why you mention Georgia as a place where general voter turnout didn't matter. R votes went from 2,089,104 to 2,461,854. D votes went from 1,877,963 to 2,473,633. Both sides reached a bunch of new voters, but Democrats reached significantly more.

Because it was important that dems turned out their voters, not dems turned out ALL voters. The above would be a good example because in that case it went over 200k beyond the baseline - that's 200k more dem voters. Not voters in general. And you can see WHERE those voters turned out - they didn't turn out in heavily rural counties nearly as much as they did in urban areas and minority-heavy areas. 

A general turnout increase would have seen proportionate turnout across the board, which would likely not have helped. 

 

[Ormond]

1 hour ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Ticket splitting happened very frequently in the 2020 election. It might be rare, but it's occurring right now. 

 

You contradict yourself in the above sentence by claiming split ticket voting happened "very frequently" in 2020 and then admitting "it might be rare."

The terms "frequent" and "rare" are somewhat subjective, but Fivethirtyeight seems to have disagreed with you about 2020. Do you have any references to other data which counters them?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-wasnt-that-much-split-ticket-voting-in-2020/

And I should have looked a bit futher down the Google results list before I posted the above, since The Washington Post has an article in February 2021 when fuller data was available that found split ticket voting was actually less common in 2020 than in most previous years:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/19/2020-saw-least-split-ticket-house-voting-decades/

Edited August 28, 2023 by Ormond
adding information

[Kalbear]

21 minutes ago, Ormond said:

You contradict yourself in the above sentence by claiming split ticket voting happened "very frequently" in 2020 and then admitting "it might be rare."

The terms "frequent" and "rare" are somewhat subjective, but Fivethirtyeight seems to have disagreed with you about 2020. Do you have any references to other data which counters them?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-wasnt-that-much-split-ticket-voting-in-2020/

I mean, that article says literally that:

Quote

To make matters worse for Democrats, their candidates also underperformed Biden in states where running slightly ahead of him might have been enough to flip a Senate seat or two. 

\

If that's not split ticket voting I'm not sure what is. 

As to my contradiction - it happened repeatedly across multiple states in 2020. It isn't super common as a whole, but it was a major decider in why Biden won but did not have a major majority in the House or (especially) the senate. There was a sizeable percentage (2-4% per the 538 article above) which was the deciding factor in tighter places.

In places where they're predominantly red or blue it wasn't there nearly as much - nor did it matter all that much there anyway. I think this is another indicator that the primary decider is always going to be partisanship - but things like swing voters and splitters are going to be a factor in closer races. 

21 minutes ago, Ormond said:

And I should have looked a bit futher down the Google results list before I posted the above, since The Washington Post has an article in February 2021 when fuller data was available that found split ticket voting was actually less common in 2020 than in most previous years:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/19/2020-saw-least-split-ticket-house-voting-decades/

I'm totally fine with this because again - partisanship is the primary decider. But split-ticket voting happened a fair amount, and weirdly it happened more than people expected - largely because Trump was so unpopular. Again, from that article:

Quote

A few districts had unusually large disparities between their House and presidential results. We identified a few. Two were in Minnesota, which isn’t really a surprise: Excluding House districts in which the results were lopsided (generally because of a candidate running uncontested), the average gap between the House and presidential margins in Minnesota was 9.8 points, the largest of any state. In Utah, the average gap was 9.5 points and in Hawaii, 8.7 points.

Hawaii is a bit weird but Minnesota (a swing state) and Utah (a place that absolutely loathes Trump as far as a conservative state goes) make more sense.

[Ormond]

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

 

I'm totally fine with this because again - partisanship is the primary decider. But split-ticket voting happened a fair amount, and weirdly it happened more than people expected - largely because Trump was so unpopular. Again, from that article:

 

I'm sorry, but it makes no sense to me to say that split-ticket voting "happened more than people expected" when it happened less than it had in decades. Most political experts thought the trend for a decrease in split ticket voting would be even larger than it was? That seems rather unlikely to me.