Epicurius posted:

One voter changed his vote, but Candidate B now has 2 votes more than Candidate A.

ram dass in hell posted:

Is Terry on the left?

Ciprian Maricon posted:

Why did VA politics shift again? Could it have been all the people who ran for and won votes on good policy either winning seats outright or sufficient votes as to effectively pressure established politicians to adopt good policy? No, that doesn't sound right. It must be because people just voted blue no matter who hard enough.

Willa Rogers posted:

Who's melting down? Once again, my predictions were validated, while yours now read like outdated press releases issued by the administration.

Willa Rogers posted:

We don't know "what it is" because it's yet to be passed, but your rosy predictions about how paid leave would stay at 12 weeks & the SALT restoration was DOA were not very accurate.

Tayter Swift posted:

Isn't Halloween over? What's with the M. Bison costume?

Wikipedia posted:

In May 1977, Sliwa created the "Magnificent 13", a group dedicated to combating violence and crime on the New York City Subway.[9] At the time, the city was experiencing a crime wave.[10] The Magnificent 13 grew and was renamed the Guardian Angels in 1979. The group's actions drew strong reactions, both positive and negative.[11] Membership of the Guardian Angels showed 80 percent of them were either black or Hispanic in ethnic origin.[7] Unarmed, the group required training in karate and fulfillment of legal requirements for citizens' arrest for all members before they were to be deployed.[12] Sliwa's red beret is a component of the Guardian Angels' uniform.[13][14]

Mayor Ed Koch, a critic of Sliwa and of the organization, launched an investigation into the Guardian Angels, which according to The Washington Post, proved "so positive that the Guardian Angels will soon be awarded some sort of official status."[15] Then-Lieutenant Governor Mario Cuomo was a rare early advocate of the organization, being quoted saying "[t]hey are a better expression of morality than our city deserves".[7]

In 1992, Sliwa admitted that he and the Guardian Angels faked heroic subway rescues for publicity. He also admitted to having claimed falsely that three off-duty transit police officers had kidnapped him.[16]

VitalSigns posted:

*makes campaign ads for my opponent*
"Look hear me out here: those were really good ads. He won didn't he, poo poo my ads were so good I almost voted for him"

Herstory Begins Now posted:

counterpoint: there's a way of going negative that isn't literally sending out promotional materials for your opponent.

VitalSigns posted:

Biden says marijuana may be a ‘gateway drug.' Like most of his generation, he’s not ready to legalize it.

But we're just supposed to pretend we didn't hear that I guess, and believe the reason he hasn't done anything to legalize it is because he really really wants to but he respects the Rules Wizard too much

Sharkie posted:

This is true of literally everything ever. Oh well, better do nothing. At least Repubs might not yell at them as much if they don't do anything. You know, it's not so much that it's absolute cowardice, just real cringey pathetic poo poo, it's that the admin clearly doesn't want to do these things, so they let other people perform being nebbish, nail-biting cowards in order to give Biden et al. cover for not doing things he doesn't want to do. And that's really gross.

Harold Fjord posted:

We saw how well that approach of offering nothing worked in VA.

Local Press posted:

At the start of his campaign, McAuliffe released a six-page plan pledging “the largest increase in education investment in the history of Virginia.” He’s promised more funding to raise teacher salaries above the national average, expand access to preschool and fully adopt the Standards of Quality recommended by the Virginia Board of Education — guidance for staffing ratios, class size and other school resources.
...
Building on Democrats’ push to make Virginia friendlier to workers as well as executives, McAuliffe says he’ll require employers to offer paid sick days and family medical leave, ideas that have been discussed in the Democratic-led General Assembly but have yet to be broadly implemented. He has also called for speeding up planned increases in the state’s minimum wage, getting it to $15 per hour by 2024.
...
McAuliffe has said Youngkin’s tax policies, including the GOP nominee’s aspirations of eliminating the state income tax altogether, would inevitably blow up the state budget and bring major service cuts.
...
McAuliffe, meanwhile, has laid out detailed plans to continue the criminal justice reform initiatives set in motion last year. That includes promises to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, hire more public defenders, fund police accreditation efforts and bring new rehabilitation programs to state prisons, including a nursery program for prisoners with newborn children.

VitalSigns posted:

So this is going to be the Democrats' strategy next year huh.

People begging the government to do something, anything about the debt crushing their families get a long ponderous condescending dissertation on political stratagems and polling numbers that shows off how smart the speaker is but lacks any specific plan of action.

"Wow you sure know a lot of big words, so you're going to do that strategy to get me the help I need?"
"Lol. No."

gently caress, here we go, strap in everybody!

Lib and let die posted:

And what's with this very recent, coordinated use of the "one weird trick" meme to deride leftist ideals? It's come up a ton in this thread over the last few days and all I can think is that it came out of the latest TYT members-only livestream or something.

Hellblazer187 posted:

Jfc.

This student loan discussion has pretty much made me lose it. This is the most bad faith bullshit I've ever seen.

Hellblazer187 posted:

Republicans can literally cut taxes for billionaires and nothing happens. But a "give away" to a computer programmer making $80k, well, that's just the end of the party as we know it! See, if they do that, they'll get killed at the polls by...the people who love billionaire tax breaks!

Hellblazer187 posted:

Wiping out student debt will not make anybody's life worse. It will make 45 million lives better. There are many people who, if you ask them about it, will say they oppose it. But it won't actually impact their lives negatively. Negatively impacting zero people while positively impacting 45 million people directly and the rest of the country indirectly via stimulus would not "completely doom Democrats for a generation to come."

Hellblazer187 posted:

The fact that so many of you think this is depressing as gently caress, though.

Hellblazer187 posted:

Edit: Democrats are loving doomed for 2022 and 2024 as things stand because they've done close to nothing. And here you have people going "oh, they better not do a thing though!" because some people might not like it. I get it, it's academic since Biden hates young people, but holy poo poo.

Hellblazer187 posted:

...did you not see the post I quoted that said relief would doom the party for a generation?

Ravenfood posted:

It might.

I'm not sure the fear that it will should be enough to shut down discussion and prevent it from being floated as a discussion. Good policy is good policy even if it is punished electorally, and there is no proof it would be punished either.

Xombie posted:

I have not asked for 1.7T. I, personally, am only asking for the 50,000 per person that Democratic leaders themselves have proposed. Or, at minimum, the 10,000 that Biden himself promised.

Ershalim posted:

I don't mean this as an attack, and I hope it doesn't come across as one. Why do you think in these terms? Like, why is electoral consequence something you give so much credence to? Most of the largest changes in US history have been wildly unpopular at the time of the inception (or at least, unpopular enough that they would have electoral consequences) -- so why is this a metric you ascribe so much weight to? We know that polices for Medicare 4 All and parental leave for newborns are overwhelming popular, and there would certainly be electoral weight to them -- in a good way, so we know that democrats obviously don't think of things in these terms or they would do them.

Is your fixation on the optics here a one-sided way to explain why we shouldn't attempt to do good things for small groups of people, including you? I honestly don't get the drive.

Xombie posted:

I really and truly do believe people are casting government spending as more electorally dangerous than it actually is. When the Democrats threw caution to the wind with massive unilateral spending this past spring, they were rewarded with wide approval. Now that they're nickel and dimeing to get the infrastructure plan through, their approval numbers are in freefall.

I have do not remember a time that the Democrats were rewarded for being fiscally conservative as long as I've been old enough to vote.

Feldegast42 posted:

155,485,078 people voted for president in 2020. 15% of that is a *mere* 23,322,761 people.

Biden won by 60,000 votes.

Writing off 15% of your electorate will very likely lose you all 50 states and give the other team a supermajority.

But who cares, its only 15%! A handful of our dear donors donate way more money than those schlubs

Valentin posted:

yeah a key thing here is that by the logic being advanced on student loan debt here, SALT is simply unforgivable.

Valentin posted:

Cool! So we can agree that a policy being a regressive expenditure or targeted at a specific group isn't actually a reason for it to be passed or not to pass, and can discard all the analysis about what loving percent of the electorate has debt at a sufficient level to have their pro-Dem switch flipped by student loan debt relief, because that's not actually what makes policy happen or not happen. If SALT can pass and student loan debt relief can't get off the ground, then the primary concerns in play would seem to be 1) what Democrats want to pass and 2) what they think they can successfully message on (or, in the case of SALT, successfully avoid messaging on).

At that point, I have two questions: why should anyone at all be happy that Democrats have more political will to pass SALT than student loan debt relief, and who exactly benefits from this analysis that SALT sucks but is easily passable, but student loan debt is impossible for political reasons? What point is there to break down these numbers about what is and isn't electorally plausible based on demographics and debt burdens, when those aren't actually relevant for understanding what policies get implemented and how?

Sharkie posted:

Ok, now do SALT.

Valentin posted:

I guess I simply don't understand, if the bolded section represents the core of your argument, what the point is in chasing this argument to its absolute final end where everyone agrees that student loan debt relief as an individual policy probably has an indeterminate electoral outcome (potentially negative in pissing people off, potentially beneficial in activating uninterested or demoralized voters, but ultimately, and here is the key, largely unknowable because the effect is based on a million other factors), but we all agree that it's the kind of thing that should pass in an ideal world. I don't see how any of that is funny, insightful, or advances our understanding of American politics.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Mellow Seas agrees with you but is locked in a false prison of the two party system so the assumption is that if you bail on the Dems than you're going Republican or at least allowing them to win.

Gumball Gumption posted:

The idea of any new political movement shifting things or any grand sweeping gesture and stone wall getting progressive wins is understandably seen as impossible because well, America is bad at that. I think it's a doomerism of a sort because it forces you into arguing that we don't deserve good things because that's become a fact in your paradigm.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1456612937406296065

Meatball posted:

He's not negotiating in good faith and apparently nobody in the house or senate has noticed.

TulliusCicero posted:

Is this a game or does his House Boat palace have a gas leak?

What the gently caress is wrong with this dude's scrambled egg brain?

Lib and let die posted:

No, it's not really an issue because most of us are smart enough to disengage when the bait is presented. The issue is that the baiting behavior is enabled, and further, encouraged, by not getting dinged. Calling for violence is a guaranteed ban+30 if not a perma. trying to bait posters into putting out detailed screeds of how to take action against the US government should be, bare minimum, a "don't do that" sixer.

TulliusCicero posted:

I fully expect the Democrats to learn exactly nothing from the complete loving failure of Third Way idiocy and chase suburban votes that are more than happy to shift back to voting for their friendly neighborhood white supremacist golf buddy, if it means they have full control over education

VitalSigns posted:

I shot the Austrian Archduke what are you nerds doing for Serbia

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

God please Don't bargain yourselves out of the upper hand here CPC leadership

https://twitter.com/HotlineJosh/status/1456761634626711552
...


Sounds like the line is holding

VitalSigns posted:

I got $1800

So did millions of other people

Expanded unemployment benefits

PPP loans for small businesses

more money for refugee overflow camps

wow all those good things happening really helped give us all hope for the future

Cpt_Obvious posted:

The current situation is that going to the grocery store feels like being punched in the testicles. Trip report: an $8 pre-pandemic chicken now costs $13.

Let's not forget the absurdity of claiming that average wages have risen while in reality there has been a mass exodus from the lowest paying jobs (especially in the retail and food service industry) which artificially inflates those numbers. I really don't understand people claiming the economy is fine and will shortly return to normal. The same talking heads on tv pushing this idea were also claiming there would be no inflation, then that the inflation was only temporary, and now saying "well actually inflation doesn't matter that much".

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Let's not forget the absurdity of claiming that average wages have risen while in reality there has been a mass exodus from the lowest paying jobs (especially in the retail and food service industry) which artificially inflates those numbers

linked article posted:

“households in the bottom income quintile saved less than implied by their pre-pandemic behavior,” the study found.
...
the degree of the savings inequality was unexpected, according to Nancy Vanden Houten, the economist who co-authored the study with Gregory Daco.

“This latest data suggests that savings are even more skewed to the top than we previously thought,” Vanden Houten said.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

There are lies, there are drat dirty lies, and then there are statistics.

Unemployment is a very bad metric for so many reasons. For example, if you quit your job and don't look for a new one, you're not counted as unemployed, which is exactly what's going on right now.

Epic High Five posted:

The only anti-drunk driving measure I'm aware of is the ignition interlock but it sounds like they have something else in mind, I have no idea at what stage of development such a technology is. All this stuff's gonna require chips tho so here's to hoping that whole thing is sorted out by then

eviltastic posted:

What stats are you going off of?

AP, October 29 posted:

Wages jumped in the three months ending in September by the most on records dating back 20 years, a stark illustration of the growing ability of workers to demand higher pay from companies that are desperate to fill a near-record number of available jobs.

Pay increased 1.5% in the third quarter, the Labor Department said Friday. That’s up sharply from 0.9% in the previous quarter. The value of benefits rose 0.9% in the July-September quarter, more than double the preceding three months.

Workers have gained the upper hand in the job market for the first time in at least two decades, and they are commanding higher pay, more benefits, and other perks like flexible work hours. With more jobs available than there are unemployed people, government data shows, businesses have been forced to work harder to attract staff.

More AP posted:

However, compared with a year ago, it’s a closer call. In the year ending in September, wages and salaries soared 4.2%, also a record gain. But the government also reported Friday that prices increased 4.4% in September from year earlier. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, inflation was 3.6% in the past year.

Jason Furman, a former top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said Friday that inflation-adjusted wages still trail their pre-pandemic level, given the big price jumps that occurred over the spring and summer for new and used cars, furniture, and airline tickets.

Whether inflation fades in the coming months will determine how much benefit workers get from higher pay.

Eric Cantonese posted:

Is there a way that anti-DUI might be like lane keep assist? Or basically some alarm blaring at you to pull over if you're too erratic?

eviltastic posted:

I mean, okay, if you want to say prices are all over the place I'll believe you. I don't take issue with your suggestion that subsets not impacted by particular price hikes will be better off. But there is absolutely stagnation of what we can call a typical wage "hidden in the numbers". BLS data shows real median wages going down, not up, for every quarter since Q2 2020, including the most recent one. FRED charts haven't been updated for Q3 2021 yet, but show the same thing.

e: and taking a slightly longer view, as that NYT piece invites us to do, suggests similarly disappointing growth. I'm pretty suspicious of their choice to reference growth in average numbers when claiming "sharp" increases, particularly contrasted with the suggestion that said sharp increase was driven by lower earners.

Majorian posted:

It's a sense of precarity. I posted that Gallup poll about people's lack confidence in the economy a couple pages back, and I think that's what you're seeing in these other polls. Even if people are doing better financially than they were five, ten, or twenty years ago, it's hard to feel like the economy is doing "well" if you're afraid that the bottom's going to drop out again suddenly and blow away your life savings (or that you or a family member will get sick and suddenly face huge medical debts, or any other number of possible tragedies).

Abner Assington posted:

I mean, cool, but can we also get some regulations on the low beams on cars using HID/xenon headlights (which is to say, effectively every new-ish car on the road)? They're incredibly blinding on even low settings, and is only made worse by every dickhead in this country driving an SUV/pickup truck, so their lights are perfectly positioned at head level for me in my hatchback.

Willa Rogers posted:

But that's just all glittery farts from unicorn butts; the perfect is the enemy of the good, and most people are doing just fine economically, because Chase says savings are at a record high and lower-income workers are receiving 11 percent more on average than they were two years ago.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Sharkie posted:

I think when you talk to people about how they feel that data doesn't matter, I don't know anyone who thinks yeah things own right now, this is great. I don't know why I should care about the data when it describes a world I cannot see or touch.