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Grayson has been melting down the past few days. "Are you some kind of making GBS threads robot?! You go around making GBS threads on people?!" -Alan Grayson, 2016 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/alan-grayson-erupts-as-senate-bid-looms-117925.html This entire Politico story is worth reading. The man is not entirely sound of mind.
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May 14, 2015 02:41
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Concerned Citizen posted:Grayson has been melting down the past few days. The only way Grayson could be more LF is if he resigns with a speech that reads in it's entirety: "I'm gay." quote:After a POLITICO story ran last week, Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers finally reached the congressman on his cellphone. Grayson refused to comment, but instead swore at Powers using the F-word. So "gently caress off" isn't a comment now? What kind of world are we living in? Fuckt Tupp has issued a correction as of 02:52 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 02:46
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I like that he is more than willing to say poo poo that is completely incendiary and attention-grabbing. I don't think I would vote for him, because I haven't got the guts, but man, at least someone on the left is actually calling literally anyone out for literally anything.
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May 14, 2015 04:46
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I like that he is more than willing to say poo poo that is completely incendiary and attention-grabbing. I don't think I would vote for him, because I haven't got the guts, but man, at least someone on the left is actually calling literally anyone out for literally anything. He's basically somewhere between Stockman and Cruz in terms of outspoken inflammatory quality, except it's for a cause that's better than "nuke their rear end take their gas and use it to make a flaming tire moat along the border"
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May 14, 2015 05:04
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Don't worry everyone, fishmech will be around soon to explain away this latest mess of Grayson's. You see its really okay that he's swearing at reporters on the record and probably doing worse off of it, thats not actually damaging and won't ever come back to bite him.
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May 14, 2015 05:05
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It's official: Russ Feingold's running for Senate. 
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May 14, 2015 14:43
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I actually voted for Grayson in 2012 because while he's certainly animated his heart seems to be in the right place. But yeah, there's no way he's ever going to get elected to the Senate while acting like a crazy man.
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May 14, 2015 14:53
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Joementum posted:It's official: Russ Feingold's running for Senate. This should be an easy pick up for the Democrats right?
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May 14, 2015 14:56
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Mitt Romney posted:This should be an easy pick up for the Democrats right?
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May 14, 2015 14:59
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Joementum posted:It's official: Russ Feingold's running for Senate. Woohoo!
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May 14, 2015 15:03
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I hope Feingold wins by like 20 points that would be great.
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May 14, 2015 15:09
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Mitt Romney posted:This should be an easy pick up for the Democrats right? I mean, in theory, but I have been shocked by my home state repeatedly the last few election cycles. That said, it still usually turns out dem for president and a lot of conservatives are pissed at Walker for spending all his time out of state, so even him getting the nom might not be enough to swing the state red in 2016.
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May 14, 2015 16:31
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Joementum posted:It's official: Russ Feingold's running for Senate.  Sen. Johnson has been embarrassing.
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May 14, 2015 17:10
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Apparently anonymous Wisconsin Democrats are complaining that the DSCC was recruiting Feingold and telling other candidates to stay out of the race. There is a quote about the DSCC clearing the way for Feingold shows it only helps "Washington insiders."
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May 14, 2015 18:40
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Wisconsin Democrats are clearly incompetent.
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May 14, 2015 18:44
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Apparently anonymous Wisconsin Democrats are complaining that the DSCC was recruiting Feingold and telling other candidates to stay out of the race. There is a quote about the DSCC clearing the way for Feingold shows it only helps "Washington insiders." After their repeat gently caress-ups they shouldn't be allowed to recruit anyway.
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May 14, 2015 18:48
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Apparently anonymous Wisconsin Democrats are complaining that the DSCC was recruiting Feingold and telling other candidates to stay out of the race. There is a quote about the DSCC clearing the way for Feingold shows it only helps "Washington insiders." Unless they actually have someone better than Feingold they can gently caress right off.
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May 14, 2015 19:15
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Gyges posted:Unless they actually have someone better than Feingold they can gently caress right off. I bet they want to run that guy who kept losing to Walker.
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May 14, 2015 19:15
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Anonymous WI Democrats, also known as Walker's plants.
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May 14, 2015 19:32
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Apparently anonymous Wisconsin Democrats are complaining that the DSCC was recruiting Feingold and telling other candidates to stay out of the race. There is a quote about the DSCC clearing the way for Feingold shows it only helps "Washington insiders." It's probably just Mike Tate bitching and moaning that he can't gently caress up another election by picking some bland terrible candidate who can barely talk.
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May 14, 2015 21:02
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Where the hell was he for the governor's race last year? Would have been nice to flush Walker early so he has to run as former governor of Wisconsin. I mean, I'm sure the DSCC is happy about their chances of picking up the seat, but that's not going to revert Wisconsin's slide into the Texas of the Midwest.
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May 15, 2015 00:11
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Yeah, seriously. Having Democratic senators is obviously nice, but we need to start getting our poo poo together with governor's races because the states themselves are where a lot of the big damage is being done. At least until President Sanders abolishes state's rights as fostering inequality and ushers in the Socialist Republic of America 
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May 15, 2015 01:16
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Interesting tactic from Mark Kirk: he cut an ad talking about having to learn to walk again after suffering a stroke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPUoJ70cM4E As a reminder: this is his opponent: 
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May 15, 2015 01:35
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So they're clearly on equal footing
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May 15, 2015 03:54
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Joementum posted:Interesting tactic from Mark Kirk: he cut an ad talking about having to learn to walk again after suffering a stroke.
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May 15, 2015 03:58
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ohgodwhat posted:So they're clearly on equal footing 
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May 15, 2015 03:59
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Ravenfood posted:I eagerly await Kirk's supporters calling her a coward who doesn't support her country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Cleland
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May 15, 2015 04:12
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Ravenfood posted:I eagerly await Kirk's supporters calling her a coward who doesn't support her country. quote:He said political advisers for McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, "day after day had to take him and almost throw him against a wall and hit him against the head and say, 'Senator, you have to let people know you served!'" Her previous opponent, who was not a veteran. She crushed him, of course.
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May 15, 2015 04:17
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ohgodwhat posted:So they're clearly on equal footing 
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May 15, 2015 05:04
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Joementum posted:Interesting tactic from Mark Kirk: he cut an ad talking about having to learn to walk again after suffering a stroke.
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May 15, 2015 05:13
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Rescue Toaster posted:Where the hell was he for the governor's race last year? Would have been nice to flush Walker early so he has to run as former governor of Wisconsin. Mike Tate, the outgoing WisDems chairman is a loving idiot and thinks that moderate, inoffensive candidates are the way to win votes. He doesn't seem to get that R voters in WI are unflippable. Instead he spends the party's money pissing off leftists putting garbage candidates like Burke on the slate. Fortunately, he is being shown the door this year.
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May 15, 2015 05:50
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Mike Tate, the outgoing WisDems chairman is a loving idiot and thinks that moderate, inoffensive candidates are the way to win votes. He doesn't seem to get that R voters in WI are unflippable. Instead he spends the party's money pissing off leftists putting garbage candidates like Burke on the slate. Fortunately, he is being shown the door this year. My roommate has worked with people in the Wisconsin State Senate and he was really defensive of Barrett and the part in general. He was going on about how important it was to motivate the base in Milwaukee. Is there truth to that? UnoriginalMind has issued a correction as of 20:32 on May 15, 2015 |
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May 15, 2015 20:18
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UnoriginalMind posted:My roommate has worked with people in the Wisconsin State Senate and he was really defensive of Barrett and the part in general. He was going on about how important it was to motivate the base in Milwaukee. Is there truth to that? Not really. The Wisconsin Democratic Party is insanely uncoordinated and Mike Tate came up inside the Madison bubble. Their campaign strategy for the last two cycles has been to assume that people would just vote "anything but Walker", not understanding that not only is the state very rural, but that we have this little blot on the electoral map:  After Dane and Milwaukee, Waukesha is one of the largest counties in the state by population. Unlike the former two, Waukesha consistently has >100% voter turnout (because the percentage counts registered voters and you can (or could) register at the polls in Wisconson) and votes 99% Republican. That's not a made up figure. The county literally votes 99% R, consistently, every election. It is FYGM The County. Meanwhile, Dane county goes ~60-70% D depending on the candidate and Milwaukee 50-70%. It's just not enough to beat the sheer weight of Waukesha's vote unless you energize the leftist base. Wisconsin's leftists are insanely deenergized right now. After a month of intense protests in 2011 at the capital over Walker's anti-union bill, the unions and Wisconsin Dems managed to get enough signatures to hold a recall. After a circus of a primary, they ended up nominating Tom Barrett for a do-over run. Barrett is a good-ish mayor, but Walker kicked his rear end and a lot of leftists perceived this as the dems just taking care of their own and being sore losers. In reality, Mike Tate was against recruiting any other candidate from the start. People who participated in the protests wanted to draft Peter Barca, the state House of Representatives minority leader who became very popular due to his solidarity with the protestors. Others wanted Feingold to run, but he wasn't willing. Feingold has reason to be pissed at the Wisconsin Dems. Tate basically invested none of their money in his 2010 re-election campaign until a week out from the elections. Ron Johnson was able to win based on his business money plus a campaign accusing Feingold of being a Washington insider. Tate, again in his Dane County bubble, just assumed that nobody would vote for an idiot over a qualified senator like Feingold. Feingold lost and decided his non-elected political pursuits were worth more of his time than a gubernatorial recall race that the WisDems didn't even want him in. Cut to 2014, and the WisDem bench is even thinner. Tate's management of the party means that their margins in both houses of the legislature shrank and there's just nobody worth a drat to run. Tate recruits Mary Burke to run. Mary Burke was the CEO of Trek, and was on the school board one time (I'm being sarcastic, she did also have an appointed role in the state's administration back in the 90s). Mike Tate does his Mike Tate thing where he assumes that nobody really wants that idiot Walker in charge, so he picks a candidate who is inoffensive and with business leadership bona fides. Problem is, she doesn't really have an opinion on anything. The perception of her was that she answered questions from reporters with what she thinks voters want to hear. In the debate, she's stammering and inarticulate. Walker ends up looking charismatic compared to her. She doesn't really have any policy planks that leftists are excited about, and she oversaw the shipping of a bunch of Trek jobs to China. Again, people on the left just don't show up to vote and Walker handily ambles into reelection. That leaves us where we are today. Left-wing voters in Wisconsin don't feel like the Democrats actually care about advancing our issues, the Dems have been spending nearly the last decade chasing after the mythical "centrist" voter that doesn't exist here, and and we have a voter ID law that has finally shaken off its last lawsuits and is about to kick in. Mike Tate has been given the boot, but his replacement is also his predecessor. Whether he makes better choices for state-level candidates remains to be seen. To directly answer your question, motivating the base in Milwaukee (and Madison) is important. Putting up candidates like Barrett doesn't do that though. The base wants people who care about how segregated Milwaukee and Madison are. The base wants somebody who will take a firm commitment to reverse Walker's union reforms (neither Barrett nor Burke actually said they would, instead opting for meandering non-answers). The state is ultrapolarized and one side of the equation doesn't seem willing to take strong progressive stands on anything. Hopefully Feingold's campaign can re-energize this element a little bit, but without other strong candidates running for state offices I don't know that we can undo the damage Walker has done locally. Taking back the whole legislature and the governor's mansion is a big proposition.
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May 15, 2015 22:00
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So Loretta Sanchez has stepped up to challenge Kamala Harris for the democratic nomination for California. She launched her campaign two days ago. How's she doing? http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article21200154.html quote:Two days after entering the race for the U.S. Senate, Rep. Loretta Sanchez met with an Indian American group on Saturday and mimicked a racial stereotype of American Indians. So... Bad. She's doing bad so far.
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May 17, 2015 05:37
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She (and the rest of the will they or won't they SoCal pols) really hosed up by sitting back and letting Harris scoop up all of those establishment endorsements. That stuff might not matter to much for president but for a state-wide position getting so many influential people to support you is a big help.
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May 17, 2015 14:40
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I feel like Walker was far more lucky than good in 2010 and 2014. He just happened to get to be part of two massive wave elections in a row. The recall wasn't timed for November for reasons we'll all never totally understand. Given the electorate in 2010 and 2014, where gubernatorial candidates in far bluer states failed, I don't see how shifting to the left would have done any better. What good is going out and promising to undo the union busting laws when 35-40% of your union voters are voting for Scott Walker anyway? And the electorate ended up being conservative enough that running a farther to the left candidate probably would have gotten the same or worse result.
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May 18, 2015 00:06
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Concerned Citizen posted:I feel like Walker was far more lucky than good in 2010 and 2014. He just happened to get to be part of two massive wave elections in a row. The recall wasn't timed for November for reasons we'll all never totally understand. Given the electorate in 2010 and 2014, where gubernatorial candidates in far bluer states failed, I don't see how shifting to the left would have done any better. What good is going out and promising to undo the union busting laws when 35-40% of your union voters are voting for Scott Walker anyway? And the electorate ended up being conservative enough that running a farther to the left candidate probably would have gotten the same or worse result. Because if leftist turnout is bad, as it is in off years, trying to appeal to the people who were already going to turn out (for your opponent) is really stupid. There is no "middle" to appeal to in Wisconsin. The Dems can either energize the left or die. It's that simple.
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May 18, 2015 05:50
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Because if leftist turnout is bad, as it is in off years, trying to appeal to the people who were already going to turn out (for your opponent) is really stupid. There is no "middle" to appeal to in Wisconsin. The Dems can either energize the left or die. It's that simple. But why do you assume that the people who failed to turn out were leftists? It's just as likely they were Dem-leaners that mainly vote in presidentials. In that sense, there's no advantage to going left. They won't vote anyway. The only way you get to 50+1 is to go for persuadable voters. Keep in mind, though, that given the electoral environment in the Wisconsin midterm there was pretty much no candidate in existence, including ol' Russ Feingold, that could have won that election. Lest we forget, Our Lord and Savior Russ lost in 2010 along with Tom Barrett. But did Russ run it closer? Sure. Russ lost by 5 points, and Tom Barrett lost by 5.8. Not really significant. Like, the theory of petulant leftists who'd rather have Scott Walker destroy Wisconsin than elect a centrist strikes me as untrue. There aren't THAT many accelerationists! I also completely disagree that there is "no middle" in Wisconsin. I won't define "middle" ideologically because most voters aren't necessarily coherent ideologically and many just have a grab bag of positions from both the left and right. Instead, I'll look at voters who are "UFGs" (up for grabs). Now, this is a state where Obama won Paul Ryan's Congressional district in 2012, and then on the same ballot his constituency voted to re-elect him. If we compare 2012 presidential to 2010's senate election, we can see a fairly clear picture: turnout increased in raw votes by 29.2%, yet the % of dem votes increased by 37.1%. The likelihood, then, is that you have a pile of voters who voted in both elections and switched parties between 2010 and 2012. And some of those may have switched, again, between 2012 and 2014. This isn't a super robust analysis, though, and you couldn't really do one without a poll. There are fairly good ways to figure out the size of the pool of UFG voters through message test polls and modeling, and I would think Burke would have run to the left if her polling showed that as a more robust winning strategy than trying to win over UFG voters. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 08:26 on May 18, 2015 |
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May 18, 2015 08:01
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:Not really. The Wisconsin Democratic Party is insanely uncoordinated and Mike Tate came up inside the Madison bubble. Their campaign strategy for the last two cycles has been to assume that people would just vote "anything but Walker", not understanding that not only is the state very rural, but that we have this little blot on the electoral map: Good post. Thanks for the information.
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May 18, 2015 08:38
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Teddybear posted:So Loretta Sanchez has stepped up to challenge Kamala Harris for the democratic nomination for California. She launched her campaign two days ago. How's she doing? Jesus, maybe I should call her up and ask for a job. So bad doesn't even quantify it. This is horrible.
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May 18, 2015 08:41
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