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On the subject of Ground Game, I was at a campaign office in Arizona on Sunday and the place was packed. Something like 30 people in there and probably twice as many people out knocking on doors. Nate Silver seems to have pretty low odds for Kirkpatrick winning the Senate, but I can't believe they'd push so aggressively if it was really a lost cause. Based on what I've heard about the Trump campaign's ground presence, I think there's a real chance for things to go way better than anyone predicted. Like, to use a tortured sports metaphor, the normal situation is two teams, often mismatched trying to score points. But this time, it's like one team didn't even bother to show up, or maybe put up an intramural sports club against a professional team. I don't think the Dems are taking the House, but I think they might get enough seats to put the other side into a really tough situation if they can't maintain party unity.
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Nov 1, 2016 18:23
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canepazzo posted:Trump's GOTV is going to win Nevada: Does anyone have experience with the GOP equivalent to VoteBuilder? Is it any good?
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Nov 1, 2016 23:38
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Northjayhawk posted:This is the first time we'll be able to judge the absolute value of GOTV. We could judge the relative value when Obama outperforms the polls because he was better at it then Romney, but at least Romney tried. I think it'll be interesting, and I hope it's a huge number. This year, the Democrats have run real campaigns for the first time in a lot of safe R elections. If having no ground game is a 5-7 point penalty, some of these R+10 seats might actually only be +3.
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Nov 1, 2016 23:57
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I'm curious, maybe it'd be better to ask when things are a little less crazy, but how many people here are actually involved to the point that they attend regular meetings? (AA doesn't count!) I really recommend it, it won't necessarily push you towards the center, but it can be a moderating influence to understand how things work on the inside, and how things are changing. I'd probably be a Bernout still mad that Hillary stole the election if I didn't have a ton of experience seeing how things actually work.
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Nov 2, 2016 00:12
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DeathSandwich posted:I mean, there is a mandated minimum of justices to fill quorum (6 IIRC), but there is no mandate that it has to be 9 on the bench. If we got that deep into a Constitutional crisis, who would stop the court from making rulings anyways? Seems like only the Supreme Court could say no.
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Nov 2, 2016 16:36
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:How the hell does Nate justify having Clinton's odds at <70% when her winning every state where she has at least a 70% chance gives here 272 EVs? His model is designed to assume that polls could all have major systemic biases baked in that can't be detected until election day. Things like "What if Republicans just don't respond to polls anymore because they disproportionately let calls go to voicemail?" Or "What if Republicans are so ashamed of Trump that they can't admit to a total stranger that they're going to vote for Trump, but still vote that way in the privacy of a voting booth?"
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Nov 2, 2016 19:27
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I've mentioned this before, but if you look at the chairs, they obviously need a fresh coat of paint, and they're sitting out in the driveway, as if they were about to be painted. And coincidentally, someone else used black spray paint to vandalize his driveway with a curiously phrased message.
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Nov 2, 2016 21:23
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Actually my entire adulthood has pretty much been a quickly-shrinking window of things I think I have an informed opinion on. It's not what you know, or don't know, it's about figuring out how much you know you don't know. If you're walking down a trail in the forest and see a mushroom, it doesn't really matter if you know what species of mushroom it is and if it's safe. What does matter is that you know that you don't know. You know that lots of mushrooms are super poisonous and that it's better to just not touch it. We talk about this stuff all the time in the IT forums, a lot of the best people go through a phase where they really feel like idiots. Those people are the ones smart enough to know when they need to get help or do more research.
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Nov 2, 2016 21:33
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Anyone going to the Arizona Rally today?
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Nov 2, 2016 21:37
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Northjayhawk posted:He knows Hillary will win and appoint a Democrat to head the FBI. It is probably not a good idea for the GOP to accept a precedent that could eventually lead to the FBI acting as a political weapon for the sitting president Especially when the Democratic party probably has a lock on the office for a long long time.
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Nov 2, 2016 21:42
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Kevyn posted:Just got back from voting in MA. It was my first time early voting, is it normal for them to ask you to put your ballot in an envelope and write your loving name and address on it? Doesn't that kinda defeat the whole secret ballot thing? This is to prevent signature challenges. The myth is that Democrats like to dig through the trash to find discarded ballots, fill them out, and submit them. This allows them to confirm that you actually voted and not some imposter.
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Nov 2, 2016 22:31
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Covok posted:I don't know if this is the right place to ask or the right time and, if it isn't, redirect me, but I'm thinking for running for the mayor's office in my village. Anything I should know? Probably wrong time. We've had political insider/campaign threads before, and there's a handful of experienced people on the forums. After the election you should definitely create a thread.
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Nov 2, 2016 22:56
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I was told that nobody shows up to these rallies. I spent an hour and a half trying to get into a parking garage that was already full.
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Nov 3, 2016 01:14
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This rally is pretty cool. Tons of people and Gabby Giffords in on stage. She's got the whole crowd chanting "Gabby! Gabby!" If you skipped this. You're a sucker. Data is limited so I can't post pictures.
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Nov 3, 2016 02:39
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ManlyGrunting posted:I'm not sure I can vote for someone who doesn't use the third wish to free the genie. Her third wish is that immediately after voicing her third wish, Donald Trump will find the lamp, the genie will go through the whole "You have three wishes thingy" and then once Donald makes his wish, the genie instead kicks him in the nuts and is freed from his lamp.
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Nov 3, 2016 08:06
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WampaLord posted:If you're in line before 7 PM, you get to vote. Some lines are hours long. In the Presidential Preference election, the polling station I was collecting signatures at stopped the line at 7 and the last person voted at around 11:30. In one of the other polling stations, they ran out of parking spaces and traffic was backed up for miles from people who physically could not get in line before the deadline. Maricopa County is probably going to get a new County Recorder as a result, which is sort of a plus. The County Recorder insists that it won't happen again, but who knows.
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Nov 3, 2016 18:09
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Cup Runneth Over posted:99 of 100 states is real bad, better not pay him for his work The Solyndra gambit.
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Nov 3, 2016 18:20
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Dear STEMlords: We're all just skilled labor. Just because our field has been hard to automate so far doesn't mean that it's always going to be that way.
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Nov 3, 2016 19:13
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theflyingorc posted:I can do this, too. One thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't matter if she wins Arizona, she just needs to make it competitive. Arizona as a safe state makes it a fundraising stop. Politicians fly in, do a $100 plate dinner and fly out. If they actually have to work for it, they're stuck having to spend money there instead. Arizona and Texas becoming competitive is going to push states that used to be swing states further into blue.
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Nov 3, 2016 20:38
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:It's totally fine, great if you like improv which I kinda don't. There's one joke that had me dying though Haven't seen it, but that's pretty much what I've heard. The director apparently was banking on a funny dynamic between four funny comedians creating a funny result, and I just don't think it happened. I did hear that Leslie Jones was way better than the previews suggested.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:23
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Covok posted:If GA, TX, and AZ went blue this election, would the Republicans run from Trump in terror? Trump would have won if those treacherous GOP establishment types hadn't stabbed him in the back.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:37
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Lightning Knight posted:So. Real talk. I assume the answer to "why don't we just shoot the waste at the sun?" is because it's not cost-efficient right? Cause that was my first idea. I doubt it's cost effective, but the real reason, even if it was free or could run at a profit is that if you gently caress up, you end up with the equivalent of a global dirty bomb.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:11
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Dick Trauma posted:My elderly parents are a couple of old lefties and there's literally no one in their neighborhood they can be friends with. Back when Obama was first running for President they were subjected to the horrible comments you'd expect from their idiot old white person neighbors and after two terms of that they don't even try anymore. Does their city consist of all circular roads in concentric circles?
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Nov 3, 2016 23:21
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Nessus posted:I have no idea where the whole "shoot it into the sun" thing came from. I'm actually kind of curious because it's a very specific image I think Captain Planet did it one time.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:24
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Dick Trauma posted:WE HAVE A WINNER I was close 
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Nov 3, 2016 23:25
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Dick Trauma posted:WE HAVE A WINNER There are a lot more Democrats in Arizona than you might think. Do you know what Legislative District they're in? I can get them in touch with the local party and then they can get the hookup on all the cool election parties and stuff.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:31
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Dick Trauma posted:My mom found a Democratic group in the area, rural Pinal county. It was 5 people. She said "If you can bring a dozen donuts to the meeting and there are more donuts than people it's not worth it." So she started calling around and found a larger group in Phoenix and started doing data entry for them. Oh good! Too bad they won't get to vote against Arpaio though. That said, when you've got small organizations like that, it's pretty easy to move up. If there are only 5 other members and both of your parents become Precinct committee people, they could probably get themselves onto the State Committee, and then they'd have all sorts of opportunities to hang out with other Democrats.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:40
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Speaking of incremental change, and I know we had a big thing about Zizek a while back and I hate to bring him up again, but one of his lectures made me way more comfortable with supporting Hillary Clinton when Bernie lost the primary: I start the video at 36:30, but you could probably go back about 5 minutes to get a little more background. He's so all over the place it's hard to find a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCePcSouBOc&t=2190s The gist of it is that big changes are easy to ignore. Nobody in power is really scared of truly revolutionary ideas because they're so easy to shut down. What scares them is the little changes. We've talked about it in other discussions, how Don't Ask Don't Tell was a terrible policy by contemporary standards, but it set things in motion that made future reforms easier. You move away from the active hunting of homosexuals, to grudging tolerance (as long as they keep it sorta secret), and after a decade gays haven't destroyed the military, it's so easy to just say "Look, they're already here, we know they're already here, let's just end the charade." It's lovely, I can definitely appreciate the argument that we should have done it in 1994, but it was a difficult to do even in 2011 when I know that even in the mid 2000's it seemed uncontroversial to me. In Arizona, we're passing a marijuana legalization bill that's got big flaws. There are a lot of people who are against it because it gives too much power to groups that already have a head start in the business while shutting out smaller groups. But even if it's terribly flawed, it starts doing little things. There's a whole industry based around illegal marijuana. The County Attorney's office has gotten millions of dollars in diversion programs from referring people to TASC, a private drug treatment company (They kick back $650 to the county for every patient they process). The imperfect bill destroys this little cycle of corruption, and that makes them less financially able to promote other awful stuff. I've seen how incremental change has been destructive in the other direction. Charter schools seem like such a small thing, they're just little experimental schools, who could be angry about that. And then you see the industry that builds up around it and suffocates public education. The other half is that because these changes are so small, you don't get the same reactionary response. By the time people realize that things are accelerating, there's already momentum.
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Nov 4, 2016 09:15
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climboutonalimb posted:NYT knows what butters their bread Man, the New York times is totally in the bag for Clinton. -Idiots who I still haven't unfriended on Facebook
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Nov 5, 2016 01:17
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SpaceDrake posted:Trump represents an existential threat to the way the society of America has functioned for at least seventy years and if someone thinks it's just funny, they're out of touch, not sheltered. I don't think it's just funny. I think it's funny, depressing and scary.
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Nov 5, 2016 01:42
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