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Wait wait wait. Mississippi has a Democratic attorney general? Like a Democrat can win a statewide election in Mississippi, or is there some obscure 1870s-era clause in the Mississippi constitution that says the AG has to be a Democrat
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Nov 9, 2018 21:45
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SousaphoneColossus posted:it's a dumb take because sinema is both winning and running 8 points ahead of the actual progressive Dem governor candidate who ultimately got wiped out 56-41 Comparing an open seat to a race with a popular incumbent seems disingenuous
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Nov 13, 2018 01:09
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SousaphoneColossus posted:Why shouldn't a staunch M4A-advocating progressive be able to even run a decently close race rather than lose by 15 points, even against a decently popular incumbent? So we should cherrypick results, ignore massive confounding variables like incumbency and money, and ignore results that disagree with your thesis like Beto's progressive campaign running better in a red state than the centrist senators that got crushed the instant Campaign Obama wasn't around to drag them over the finish line. And of course ignore that the avatar of careful triangulating centrism lost to an idiot reality TV star in 2016 and brought the whole government down with her. Sounds good to me Hillary 2020!
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Nov 13, 2018 06:20
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Yall are the ones saying a single senate versus governor race in one state proves that centrism is the winningest platform. I'm pointing out that not only do you have to ignore huge confounding factors in Arizona to reach that conclusion, you also have to ignore contradictory results from the same election: Beto's progressive campaign outran a centrist gubernatorial candidate in Texas by the same margin. The response I'm getting is "hm VitalSigns maybe it's more complicated than a single simplistic interpretation of one race, did you think of that", and great I agree that's in fact the point I'm making.
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Nov 13, 2018 13:25
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Another interesting data point is that Arizona's Republican governor, like Massachusetts' and Maryland's, had local Democratic politicians endorsing him over his progressive Democratic opponent and also had a Democratic party campaign manager so another possible interpretation is that centrist Democrats are very effective at stabbing progressives and their own party in the back to get centrist Republicans elected.
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Nov 13, 2018 |
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Nov 13, 2018 16:25
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evilweasel posted:At least in New Jersey, there was an issue where mayors supported Christie because if they didn't, he'd retaliate and he seemed likely to cruise to re-election. The whole "bridgegate" scandal was an outgrowth of this, where a mayor refused to endorse and so Christie closed the bridge his town relied on. Sure it would be interesting to find out if the mayor had been threatened or if he is a conservative Democrat who prefers Republican leadership over progressives, but for the purposes of my argument it's really irrelevant why Democratic politicians were supporting the Republican. The race is being held up as an example of the failure of progressive politics with general election voters, which okay maybe, but a race where the Democrats were actively sabotaging their own party and campaigning for the enemy no matter the reason is a poor indicator of whether the party would do better in general if they fully backed progressive candidates the way they fully back centrist candidates now.
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Nov 13, 2018 21:34
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Your Boy Fancy posted:That’s not what anyone said. Everyone is shouting in agreement that there is no one true strategy in any given election beyond “connect to voters and pledge to work for things that will improve their lives.” And what that means varies almost from house to house. Sure okay. That's not wrong but it's a vacuous point, I think the argument being advanced was stronger but probably not much point in quibbling about what someone else may have meant.
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Nov 13, 2018 22:58
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evilweasel posted:It does matter a lot: if the dem mayor was supporting the Republican only after his victory was assured, then you know which direction any cause->effect issue runs. But it's also sort of a pointless aside unless you want to do a really deep dive on what happened. For example:  Did Putin suddenly become a completely different person in November 2016 such that millions of principled constitutional patriots flipped their opinions of a repressive strongman who murders the press? No, obviously what happened is Republican politicians started praising Putin and so their voters did too. If Trump flipped on Putin tomorrow, would his voters abandon him because they must just truly genuinely love Putin or they wouldn't have said so in a poll, no, just as obviously. Or on the Democratic side:  Did racism just appear on the scene in 2015 and millions of white Democrats suddenly said "oh gosh thanks to my consistently-formed ideological principles I must fight against this brand-new never-before-seen problem"? No, obviously, racism was always a problem. What changed was a prominent campaign gaining support from Democratic politicians and then most especially an explicitly pluralist 2015-2016 campaign with the slogan "Stronger Together". The Hillary campaign, for all its faults, demonstrably made rank-and-file Democrats less racist simply because being antiracist is now part of being on team Democrat in a way it wasn't before. So I don't really buy that the endorsement of prominent Democratic politicians has zero effect on voters when it tells them it's okay to support the Republican because he's an ally of our team too. After all if endorsements were meaningless, politicians wouldn't pursue them and they wouldn't be news would they. evilweasel posted:I mean, there's potential ways to make the argument that the split between the AZ governor's race and the senate race is about things other than policy differences. It may simply be that the current AZ governor is doing a relatively good job, hasn't gone down the rabbit hole of supporting trump no matter what, and so people were inclined to give him another term, but because the Senate directly acts as a check on Trump and McSally was moving more towards Trump people weren't going to give her the benefit of the doubt. That's probably a strong argument - much stronger than trying to find the handful of centrist dem traitors who caused the entire split - but it requires looking more deeply at the underlying state politics. But the counter-argument is going to be - and this is also a strong argument - that a state governor has much more power to implement progressive ideas than a senator in the party that does not control the Presidency, so if policy issues do move people they should have moved the governor's race strongly. There are of course plenty of other factors, a big one being that McSally and Ducey ran opposite campaigns, so one possible interpretation is that the politics of the Democratic challenger didn't even matter that much, and that in Arizona running away from Trump is a more popular platform among moderate Republicans than running toward him. Sinema picked up 12% of Republican voters, maybe it's because she is a moderate, or maybe she would have gotten them anyway because McSally went full MAGA. But I wasn't really giving the One True Interpretation of the race, I was pointing out that the simplistic narrative of "well the progressive lost, must have been too progressive" has a ton of confounding factors. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Nov 14, 2018 |
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Nov 14, 2018 17:11
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There's a pretty big difference between going to an Italian opera and wanting Sicily's level of development in your country
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Nov 15, 2018 02:55
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I don't disagree with most of that, but it seems to place an unusually large onus on Nelson to be responsible for everyone else. God forbid experienced party leadership be expected to build up the state party infrastructure and fill up a pipeline of up-and-coming candidates rather than coast on incumbency and the corporate cash gravy train.
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Nov 19, 2018 16:40
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It is interesting how the biggest complaint about Bernie around here in 2016 was that he isn't even a Democrat and he won't campaign for the downballot (this was false even at the time, he stumped for the downballot more than Hillary did lol). But when establishment stooges do nothing for the party, do nothing for the downballot, or even actively steal from downballot candidates' campaign funds and funnel it to their own magically the narrative becomes "oh what, just because they're a leader suddenly they're responsible for others besides themselves?" Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I know that fits your narrative, but you need to check the numbers. Part of the problem was that Nelson WASN'T on the corporate cash gravy train enough. yeah I get this is just your schtick, but that isn't a refutation of what I said
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Nov 19, 2018 16:49
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:How does the argument that Nelson didn't do enough to foster the careers of politicians in Florida follow to the conclusion that this led people to support Rick Scott? Especially when Nelson was the top-performing statewide Democrat in Florida in 2018. Because campaigning and building any infrastructure, at all, would have put him over the top in addition to helping fill the pipeline, and politician A raising less money than politician B doesn't mean he's not on the gravy train it just means he raised less money than someone else. Put in some effort dude, this is weaker than usual.
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Nov 19, 2018 17:05
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evilweasel posted:Are those figures about how much Scott "raised" including his self-funding? Probably.
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Nov 19, 2018 17:06
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:We already agreed that campaigning would have helped. That was never the argument, the argument was about using all the time Nelson had as the guaranteed nominee to open campaign offices and build infrastructure to help other candidates (and himself). The fact that he didn't do that probably doesn't mean he lost voters to Scott, it probably means that potential Nelson voters didn't come out at all. Nelson should have outrun Gillum by much more than he did on incumbency and whiteness alone, the fact that Gillum came within half a percent of an old white guy incumbent as a black newcomer to state-level politics (and did better than any Democrat gubernatorial candidate has in decades) is not an indictment of Gillum's campaign.
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Nov 19, 2018 17:17
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That doesn't mean the incumbency advantage is zero, only less than it used to be. Do I really have to look up how much Tammy Baldwin outran Evers in Wisconsin just now to prove you wrong quantitatively instead of just qualitatively because if you're not going to put in the effort to lie convincingly I'm not really into it. E: Eh gently caress it, the incumbent senator outran the gubernatorial challenger by 10 points in WI VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Nov 19, 2018 |
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Nov 19, 2018 17:35
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Yes, I agree. But you said it should have been "much more" than it was. OK so you agree you're just fishmeching about how much more is "much more", okay. Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The fact that the vote %s statewide were nearly identical and that voter participation was at a record high, seems to indicate that there wasn't a substantial group of people who really wanted to vote for Gillum, but stayed home because Nelson ran a bad campaign. That was never the claim. The claim was that Nelson should have beaten Gillum's total by more than half a percent, because incumbency advantage while diminished still exists so the indication is that Gillum's platform is more popular or Nelson is just a really poo poo campaigner or both. No one is saying people secretly wanted to vote for Gillum more than anything but stayed home because Nelson ran a bad campaign, they are saying a good campaign would have brought out people who stayed home, and those people would be more likely to vote Gillum than they would to split their tickets or leave the gubernatorial section blank, so a better effort by Nelson would have had coattails. I know you know this and you're strawmanning for shits and giggles because you haven't been banned from this thread too, but in case anyone else is confused this is the actual argument.
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Nov 19, 2018 18:03
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Right okay he should have won by more than he did so your original argument was wrong thank you for admitting it, and you're now complaining about how much "much" is, cool cool.
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Nov 19, 2018 18:09
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cheetah7071 posted:When the scandal broke Moore dropped about ten points, candidate quality absolutely does matter, at least when it's at the extremes Did he I thought Moore had low overall support all along for being a crazy idiot and the scandal didn't change it, if it did anything it swung undecided voters toward Jones. Ah yeah there it is 
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Nov 19, 2018 21:47
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cheetah7071 posted:I remember 538 doing a thing saying that Alabama is 30 points more republican than the nation. The 30 point swing could roughly be divided into 10 points from the generic congressional ballot, 10 points from candidate quality pre-scandal (because Moore was polling 20 points below what you'd expect, not just 10), and 10 from him being a pedophile. It makes sense that the swing came from undecideds rather than republicans but a swing is a swing. Sure, but it's also important that it didn't actually cause any supporters to abandon him, tribal identity trumped all, it just encouraged people who already didn't like him to throw their support to the Democrat.
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Nov 19, 2018 21:58
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Lol the mainland 9th district, only contiguous if you're a swimmer
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Nov 20, 2018 02:42
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Ego-bot posted:Matt Bevin reminding everyone what happens when you elect Republicans. Fortunately for Matt Bevin all he has to do is remind Kentucky that gay dudes are touching penises and black men are roaming the state unlynched and the state will vote to kill themselves by 50 points
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Dec 20, 2018 06:42
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Reminder that Heitkamp also voted for the hilariously unpopular bill to gut Dodd-Frank for which there is zero constituency in North Dakota, so it is a bit odd to chalk up her loss to her pro-choice position. She was just as pro-choice in 2012 and she won so there is clearly more going on here. Kind of hard to accept the "oh blue dogs have to be racist/sexist/homophobic/evil to win in red states because that's what the people want" reasoning when they specifically torpedo their own popularity by voting for terrible bills that no one but plutocrats want.
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Dec 30, 2018 22:59
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Point being that chalking up Heitkamp's loss to social issues is so overly simplistic it's useless except as a tool for pushing a narrative which "coincidentally" happens to promote more regressive social policies. Coincidentally of course.
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Dec 30, 2018 23:09
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While we could dicker about how many people remembered / voted / stayed home on the basis of the Dodd-Frank repeal, it is a fact that it was catastrophically unpopular And one of the Dems' biggest challenges is apathy and "both sides are the same"-ism and votes like that one contribute to that sentiment. Nobody wanted that bill. Republican voters didn't want that bill by 20-30 points! So before we start the horsetrading about which minorities to throw under the bus to appeal to the chuds maybe first these red state dems could stop voting for legislation so hated that America reaches across the aisle to say "gently caress that"? Just a thought idk, not a political genius here, but maybe voting for legislation that no one left right or center wants to see passed is poor electoral strategy? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Dec 30, 2018 |
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Dec 30, 2018 23:37
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I didn't say you were, and I agree that we don't know how many people knew about / remembered / voted based on Dodd-Frank in 2018. Just pointing out that in all this discussion of abortion and Judge Kavanaugh, it's been overlooked that just a few months before an election a bunch of red state Dems voted for an insanely unpopular and downright horrible bill, and it wasn't a one-off either, they're the most consistently corrupt Democrats in office who rarely miss an opportunity to sell out their voters to banks and big business. Elections are won and lost on the margins, if only one voter out of nine remembered her record well she lost by 11 points. Donnelly and McCaskill lost by 6. Nelson by 0.5% Everyone always talks about how Dems gotta get more racist to pander to Panera Bread Republicans, but I rarely see it brought up that Blue Dogs constantly score incredible own goals like deliberately voting for universally-hated legislation come what way, in order to please donors who would rather see Republicans get elected anyway. "Most voters won't even remember, so I can do whatever I want, suckerrrrrs" is just a cop-out, elections are won and lost on the margins, you don't need most voters to remember you suck and to stay home in order for you to lose, just enough to put us a few points behind the Republican. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Dec 31, 2018 00:05
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cheetah7071 posted:I mean it just feels weird to have a state whose borders are smaller than a single metro area. The people living there should absolutely be in a state though and if there's something I'm missing about why merging it into one of the adjacent states is a bad idea then I'm happy to be wrong Plenty of metro areas cross state borders though, and DC metro crossing state borders is already the case now so it can't be worse (actually it'd be better because Congress doesn't have to agree to every little thing so that's one less complication). We could go on an anti-multistate-metro crusade and annex parts of New Jersey and Connecticut to New York, and tell Kansas City to pick a state already, but if we're not going to do that then why care about it here. Even if you retrocessioned the current district to Maryland, Washington metro would still cross into Virginia and West Virginia anyway. But yeah the argument for making it a state is mainly political, we need more urban states to balance the empty rural states in the senate, but really it should be up to the people of DC if they don't want to be governed by the state of Maryland why shouldn't they have that right of self-determination? And Maryland would have to agree, do they even want it?
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Jan 8, 2019 22:59
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luxury handset posted:with the sole exception of DC, every city that crosses a state boundary has some other state to advocate for it. so you never end up in a situation where a city is trying to sit down at the negotiating table with other states without some state level government authority behind it Sure but the proposal is to make DC a state which will then have state government authority behind it so doesn't that solve this issue? VV Ah ok, well it was an interesting post, thank you for going in depth VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Jan 9, 2019 |
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Jan 9, 2019 02:44
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Lycus posted:Yes, you'd need to repeal the 23rd. In the meantime, the president and Congress can just pick symbolic electors, since the Constitution doesn't mandate that you have to have a popular vote for them. Pass a law giving those electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote
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Jan 9, 2019 02:49
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Your Boy Fancy posted:You don’t know the lay of the land at all. West Virginia is no more a metro area of DC than Delaware is. Guilty, I just went off the Wikipedia definition of the Washington Metro Area
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Jan 9, 2019 03:38
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Captain Cappy posted:What crime could he be charged with? neglect of duty seems like a generic catch-all You could make the argument that he can't possibly exercise his duty to faithfully represent all Virginians after dressing up in blackface/a Klan hood. Or that almost moonwalking at a press conference about a serious racial issue is neglecting his duty to Virginians. Also high crimes and misdemeanors isn't defined, bald-faced obvious lying to the public with this ridiculous Shaggy defense could arguably be that.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:45
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But we got work requirements on Medicaid to keep the lazy poor away from the healthcare so it was all worth it
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Feb 6, 2019 05:15
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King of Solomon posted:How the hell did this happen? Is the entire Virginia Democratic Party comprised of nightmare people? Their entire reason for existence is sucking up to the war industry and bureaucrats in the NoVA suburbs so yes
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Feb 6, 2019 17:53
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Your Boy Fancy posted:Speaking of Northam, guess who went and rat hosed the Virginia GOP? Medicaid expansion without means testing. What a fine swell day. This owns haha get wrecked Republicans. It's a good sign that even Northam can figure out that it's smart for Democrats to do good things right before an election instead of triangulating to the right to appeal to FYGM Republican voters
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Sep 29, 2019 19:36
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Wow weird a Democrat helped Republicans ban abortion in Louisiana and somehow it didn't flip a single moderate Republican who would have ever guessed.
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Oct 13, 2019 20:58
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Brony Car posted:Whoops. Misread that article! We already have a constitutional ban: the legislature can't pass a state income tax without it being approved by statewide referendum. The new prop would make it they can't pass one at all, unless they change the constitution, which you do via... statewide referendum. It literally does nothing at all. Also it just went down in flames 56-44  hopeful sign for the future
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Nov 6, 2019 07:59
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Sanguinia posted:I'm not going to lie, if it puts a stake through Mitch McConnels black, traitorous heart I'll take the Purplest Dog in the Democratic Party in his place. It won't lol.
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Nov 21, 2019 06:20
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Deteriorata posted:
Liberalism.txt
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Nov 26, 2019 04:00
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Nancy Pelosi is a millionaire she's never going to do anything for working people
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Dec 3, 2019 05:48
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And that's not all https://twitter.com/JustinTX_20/status/1207104142092754944
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Dec 18, 2019 06:16
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eh he's not wrong, it just isn't polite to say it so it really comes down to whether you think polite electoralism is a meaningful strategy for reform, he apparently does not
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Dec 18, 2019 18:13
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