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PoliGAF 2017 |OT4| The leaks are coming from inside the white house

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Daria

Member
I don't think it will go full blue, having lived here my whole life, but I don't see Snyder surviving after fucking up Detroit, Flint, the Great Lakes, and the school system as badly as he did.

Didn't think about this until i just read it: This is Synder's second term, he's automatically cut from re-election.

but one thing to keep in mind is this
n the 2018 gubernatorial race, the Republicans will be the incumbents, having controlled the governorship and the legislature for eight straight years for the first time since 1932. The race should be competitive.[6]
 

Ogodei

Member
Didn't think about this until i just read it: This is Synder's second term, he's automatically cut from re-election.

but one thing to keep in mind is this

Should be competitive, but i'm very pessimistic about Michigan. GOP successfully ran the state into the ground and i think anyone with the energy to fight that probably left already, or plans to.
 

Daria

Member
Should be competitive, but i'm very pessimistic about Michigan. GOP successfully ran the state into the ground and i think anyone with the energy to fight that probably left already, or plans to.

Agreed. many voters, especially those 20's to 30's, are ready to leave this state but I think a lot of what is keeping some educated voters are flagship universities and big company jobs (Dow, Delphi, GM, etc). even though i haven't been to detroit much lately, i don't think their recovery has come very far
 
Very interesting. Jennifer Messer is paid $20,000 a month to do minimal legal work for the city of Fishers, IN.

Officials in Fort Wayne and South Bend, which rank second and fourth respectively among Indiana cities in population, say much of their economic development work — Messer’s specialty — is handled in-house by their primary attorneys.

The same goes for Bloomington, which is similar in size to Fishers. Mary Catherine Carmichael, the city’s spokeswoman, said Bloomington could hire between two and three attorneys, including benefits, for the same amount Fishers pays Messer each year. The average salary and benefits package for the city’s seven full-time lawyers is about $105,000 a year, she said.

Indianapolis, the state’s largest city, does not currently have any attorneys under contract that make a flat monthly fee of $20,000 or more, officials said.

In Evansville, the state’s third-largest city, a firm works under contract to handle most of the city’s legal work, including economic development. Records show the firm was paid about $478,000 in 2016 after a team of 20 lawyers put in a total of 3,094 hours of work — an average of about 60 hours a week.

Sounds fishy!
 
Michigan will never have a Democratic governor again, just like how New Jersey, Illinois, and Vermont are too far gone for Republicans.
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Trump has done that repeatedly now, confirming a rumor because he can't hold himself back and wants to save face.

"By the way, about the Russians and what I told them, you guys are acting like I told them it was Israel. I never said Israel ok? Never said it, never said the word, ok? They don't know it.

I'm not saying it was Israel I'm just saying I never said Israel. Could be Israel, could be Canada, maybe even China! Could be China! I never said Israel, so it's still a secret."
 
Trump has done that repeatedly now, confirming a rumor because he can't hold himself back and wants to save face.

"By the way, about the Russians and what I told them, you guys are acting like I told them it was Israel. I never said Israel ok? Never said it, never said the word, ok? They don't know it.

I'm not saying it was Israel I'm just saying I never said Israel. Could be Israel, could be Canada, maybe even China! Could be China! I never said Israel, so it's still a secret."

If this goes to court, the prosecution is going to have a reservoir of incriminating statements just from Twitter fingers alone.
 

royalan

Member
This is probably the best article I've read on The State of Democrats, Hillary's campaign (with criticisms of her and Bernie) and what's next. It's loooong but you should read it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/528696/

Great article. And it cements in my mind that Democrats for 2020 need a candidate that can speak to racial issues without directly speaking to them (which is pretty much how Obama ran in '08).

That's going to require someone with years of work with those communities. Ironically, if there had been no Barack Obama in 2008, this probably would have been a strength of Hillary Clinton's.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Michigan will never have a Democratic governor again, just like how New Jersey, Illinois, and Vermont are too far gone for Republicans.

I understand your joke and agree with your sentiment (Michigan will have a democratic governor again), but as someone who lived there for decades, comparing Michigan to New Jersey and Vermont is beyond laughable. The constituency is completely different.
 
I'm stealing this from the creepy images thread in OT and putting it here so I'm not the only one that has to experience this pain.

VT3oprI_d.jpg
trump4-805x587.jpg

trump2-jpg
 

Pixieking

Banned
Trump allies push White House to consider regime change in Tehran

”The policy of the United States should be regime change in Iran," said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who speaks regularly with White House officials about foreign policy. ”I don't see how anyone can say America can be safe as long as you have in power a theocratic despotism," he added.

Like, the lack of self-awareness about this is crazy. The fact that the GOP love God, think abortion is killing God's babies, say that climate-change is all part of God's plan, that obstruct government and make shit up about not having to vote a SCOTUS judge in the last year of a President's term... And then have the fucking gall to complain about a theocratic despotic regime.

Fuck. Off. You. Small. Minded. Bigoted. Wanker.
 

Pryce

Member
This is probably the best article I've read on The State of Democrats, Hillary's campaign (with criticisms of her and Bernie) and what's next. It's loooong but you should read it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/528696/

Some interesting quotes:

His campaign explicitly targeted rural counties. Obama didn’t believe he could win them, and by and large he didn’t, but by redirecting populist anger and allaying cultural anxieties, he reduced his deficit among white noncollege voters to a tolerable margin. (When Bill Clinton asked his wife’s campaign to dispatch him to such small towns in 2016, campaign officials refused, because it would take him away from cities with larger vote hauls.) This tactic enabled Obama to win the upper Midwest so decisively that many analysts began to describe the region as part of a “blue wall.”

Jesus, what the fuck.

With hindsight, it’s possible to see the risks of her strategy. Her campaign theorized that dentists, accountants, and middle managers needed to fully understand how Donald Trump surrounded himself with bigots and anti-Semites. “From the start,” she argued in a sharply worded speech in August, “Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia.” Her campaign ads against Trump emphasized his misogyny. The attacks highlighted Trump’s greatest weakness, but also played to his greatest strength. Trump had spent the entirety of his campaign trying to foment a culture war, and Clinton zealously joined it. He talked endlessly about political correctness—trying to convince his voters that they weren’t just losing the debates over gay marriage or immigration, but that the elite wanted to banish them as bigots if they even dared to question the prevailing liberal view.

I never understood why they targeted Trump as a bad person. It was well known he was an asshole, yet he man handled 16 other Republicans. Why did they think moderates/leaning Republicans would not vote for him?

Greenberg’s study of Macomb became a canonical text for Democrats attempting to recover from a decade of pummeling. Bill Clinton hired him in 1992, and in his presidential campaign he spoke directly to the racial anxieties revealed in the focus groups. Clinton distanced himself from the welfare state, which he damned as bloated and inefficient. He promised to pour money into the middle class itself, through tax cuts and spending on education and health care. “Let’s forget about race and be one nation again,” he told an audience in Macomb. “I’ll help you build the middle class back.”

So basically, whites love the welfare state as long as it benefits them the most. (I wonder if AA's, Hispanics and other groups feel the same?)

This is an outstanding piece. From reading the article, I wonder how well a Kamila Harris/Sherrod Brown ticket would work.
 

Loxley

Member
This is probably the best article I've read on The State of Democrats, Hillary's campaign (with criticisms of her and Bernie) and what's next. It's loooong but you should read it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/528696/

Just finished listening to the whole thing (wish I could do that with every long-form article) and it was excellent.

The part about Macomb County and how its white voters' ire had moved on from black Americans in the early 90's to immigrants in the 2010's was particularly interesting.
 
I understand your joke and agree with your sentiment (Michigan will have a democratic governor again), but as someone who lived there for decades, comparing Michigan to New Jersey and Vermont is beyond laughable. The constituency is completely different.

That's the point!!!
 

NeoXChaos

Member
Didn't think about this until i just read it: This is Synder's second term, he's automatically cut from re-election.

but one thing to keep in mind is this

If you go back to George Romney when he was elected in 1962 Republicans have controlled the Governorship for the last 40 of 56 years come 2019.

The only two Democratic Governors in that time were James Blanchard 1983-1991 & Jennifer Granholm 2003-2011

Democrats are 4/14 races there since 1962.
 
Free idea: next time there's a retirement in a safe D, majority white district (Vermont, western Mass, Portland), Dems should agree not to field candidates so it's a Green v Republican in exchange for the Greens not standing for the 2020 elections in any swing state.
 
Free idea: next time there's a retirement in a safe D, majority white district (Vermont, western Mass, Portland), Dems should agree not to field candidates so it's a Green v Republican in exchange for the Greens not standing for the 2020 elections in any swing state.
Do you not remember the green party convention. They aren't a party, they're the destination of a left leaning drainage pipe.
 
Free idea: next time there's a retirement in a safe D, majority white district (Vermont, western Mass, Portland), Dems should agree not to field candidates so it's a Green v Republican in exchange for the Greens not standing for the 2020 elections in any swing state.
So when Bernie steps down over his fraud allegations we get Senator Stein
 
The Green Party basically functions as a repository for left-wing protest votes. You have something of a core Green Party vote (which amounts to a fraction of a percent) who would never vote for a Democratic candidate under any circumstances since being outside "the system" is core to their identity. Votes they get beyond that are basically a function of how disliked the Democratic nominee is. Hence, their vote share nearly tripled between 2012 and 2016. The best way to prevent the Greens from costing us the 2020 election is pretty much not to nominate an unpopular candidate.

Besides, they care far more about getting 5% of the vote in a presidential election (for that sweet federal $$$) than they do about winning a seat in Congress, so there's basically no incentive for them to take such a deal.
 
The Green Party basically functions as a repository for left-wing protest votes. You have something of a core Green Party vote (which amounts to a fraction of a percent) who would never vote for a Democratic candidate under any circumstances since being outside "the system" is core to their identity. Votes they get beyond that are basically a function of how disliked the Democratic nominee is. Hence, their vote share nearly tripled between 2012 and 2016. The best way to prevent the Greens from costing us the 2016 election is pretty much not to nominate an unpopular candidate.

Besides, they care far more about getting 5% of the vote in a presidential election (for that sweet federal $$$) than they do about winning a seat in Congress, so there's basically no incentive for them to take such a deal.

Let me have this
 
The green party is a grifter party with no intention of actually doing anything but enriching Jill Stein and co.

Unfortunately, so are the rest of them.
 

chadskin

Member
Development in health care talks today, per 2 people involved. Effort to win Sen R moderates by making Medicaid $ via medical CPI.

There is a view that if Sen Rs can be reassured $ will be there for Medicaid w/ rising costs, they cld back bill w/ conservative amdts

Privately, some sens tell me that if the talks make progress, a vote could be postponed till after July 4. But still push for this week.
https://twitter.com/costareports/
 

Ogodei

Member

That would definitely make the bill substantively less-bad, since before they were going to cap it per-person to the general rate of inflation rather than the medical rate of inflation, though the capping still screws the system up next time we have an economic downturn.

Would make the bill less catastrophic but also likely lose votes from the Right because it still gives Medicaid a blank check for endless expansion with the cost of healthcare despite the move to per capita rates.
 
This is basically my response to losing the Georgia race, though it's more just saying yet again about how bad gerrymandering is.


Last Tuesday, we saw the Democrats lose two more House special elections. I thought that would happen -- my guess was that Ossoff would lose narrowly in Georgia and that happened, unfortunately (thought 52-48 is a slightly wider loss than I thought it would be) -- but it's disappointing. I do need to say though, that the other special election most people weren't paying attention to, in South Carolina... the Republican won only 51-48, a three point margin! That's pretty impressive for South Carolina, and for a seat that Trump won by more than 20%. A loss is a loss, definitely, but it is a somewhat promising sign to see such large gains on how Democrats have done in those seats in recent decades. The 2018 general election still could potentially be pretty good for the Democrats...

...

But, as the thread title says, gerrymandering is a really serious problem in this country. Now, I know that it is not the only cause of Republican domination; demographic self-selection, how so many liberals live in cities while the larger countryside areas are more conservative is a major cause as well, as that leads to more Republican-leaning districts than Democratic. It is a huge one, though. Recently a Daily Kos article showed how in Pennsylvania for instance, while the Democrats won it for President every time from '92 to '12, and state-level races like governor and Senate went back and forth, Republicans gerrymandered themselves in a strong majority in the state house, and thus through redistricting in the states' US House of Representatives representation. Republicans have a stable 13-to-5 majority in PA's House representation, a margin which held up through the 2008 Obama election wave for example. 13 Republicans to 5 Democrats in an evenly divided state is absurd, but thanks to our broken political system which allows representatives to draw their own district lines it is a reality. There has alway been gerrymandering in this country of course, the term dates back to the colonial days of the 1700s, but computer technology that allows people to easily target down to the house which areas to put in each district for maximum control, gerrymandering is far more effective now than it ever has been before. As a result Republicans have a solid lock on most state houses and the US House despite usually losing the national popular votes in both categories, and that is a horrible reality which is dragging this country down -- the system is absurdly rigged against our side and that's a huge problem.

Yes, there are other huge factors helping Republicans -- old people are more conservative than the young and they are far more likely to vote than younger people are; Republicans are much more likely to go out and support whoever has the "R" next to their name, while Democrats argue and in-fight constantly unless they consider their candidate perfect; as mentioned earlier geographic self-selection is a huge issue because it makes it hard to not have maps with a larger Republican lean than they should have on a purely population-derived basis; voter suppression efforts, particularly aimed at minorities, are often successful; the degree of political polarization we have in this country now is damaging, for instance because it has led to a situation where I honestly wonder if the Republican Party would act against Trump even if a tape of him literally swearing loyalty to Putin leaked, or something; sexism is still a huge problem, as you see with how the right treats Hillary and Nancy Pelosi (and other leading Democratic women like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren as well); the electoral college badly needs to go; and more. Where is the major American effort to keep out Russian hacking of our election systems, like they are doing in France and Germany, for example? Or are we just going to let them in, to have them ... help us "manage" our democracy so that it becomes more like Russia's... yes, our political system has many problems now.

But despite all that, I do think that gerrymandering is the biggest issue America faces now, and is at the root of so many of our other problems. Polarization? That would be destructive in any situation today, but if most representatives had to face competitive elections every other year, instead of only a relative handful of them, it would make a HUGE difference. Because of geographic selection Dems would need to win more than their share of votes to win the House, but analysis has shown that the Dems would have won the House back, probably multiple times, since we lost it in 2010 if all districts nationwide were not gerrymandered... and just imagine how much of a difference that would have made, even if it did not change the Senate at all! Dems won a majority of votes cast nationwide in US House races in 2016, just to start. Just like with the Presidency since '92, Republicans only win because they game the system to win despite losing. In the case of the Electoral College, the best solution, a constitutional amendment, is nearly impossible. The easier route, getting a majority of EC votes can be brought to support the National Popular Vote compact, could work but those votes are not currently there, since Republicans dominate most states and have little interest in actual democracy anymore. And in the case of gerrymandering... well, there is a case that just went to the Supreme Court about gerrymandering in Wisconsin. Had the Republicans not stolen that Supreme Court seat last year I think it would probably go the way that is badly needed, towards turning over precedent and restricting gerrymandering, but with the court as it is... we need to rely on Kennedy to support major gerrymandering reform? It needs to happen for this nation to not continue slipping away from democracy; when elections don't matter because even when you win you lose anyway, that is not a healthy democracy!

Of course, without changing gerrymandering you could just win state legislatures again and then after the 2020 census un-gerrymander, or Democratic-gerrymander, the nation to get control back, but that is only a temporary solution that doesn't actually fix the problem, and rigging things our way is hardly an ideal solution anyway, what you want are fair elections! And anyway, of course, when so many states have such effective gerrymanders, such a thing is hardly likely.

So yeah, my expectations are low, but.. Supreme Court, please do something. The Court took one other gerrymandering case on this year, a case about North Carolina's very openly partisan and racist gerrymander. North Carolina's GOP is the most militantly excessive in the nation in all things voter / elected Democratic official suppression, and they have one of the many very strong Republican gerrymanders in what should be a competitive state. This was challenged, and the NC GOP's defense that it was just a party-based thing and not a racial one -- since racial gerrymanders are banned per federal law, beyond the required minority districts of course -- did not hold up in the Supreme Court because they decided that in a state like that race and party are so closely connected that they were pretty much the same. The shocker is, though, that Clarence Thomas (!) and the four liberals were the 5 in this 5-4 vote that decided NC's gerrymander went too far, and two districts will need to be completely redone... and thus the whole state's House of Representatives district map, probably. More: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ikes_a_blow_against_racial_redistricting.html

Yes, Clarence Thomas, perhaps because of being a black man from the South, decided, despite his history of not caring about such things... for the liberal side on an issue of race and politics. That's fantastic, but that Kennedy did not also support him is a bad sign, and I doubt that, as great as the NC decision is for southern states, that signs are good for the even more important Wisconsin case upcoming (more info on that: https://thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-takes-on-gerrymandering-56f545f8ca02 ). Until this NC case the Supreme Court previously had always said that a gerrymander based on political party identification is legal. The problem is, in Wisconsin, or other states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and such, the racial element that won the day in North Carolina isn't a factor, so you're just left with a question of partisan gerrymandering and whether it should be allowed. It is incredibly important that partisan gerrymandering is finally done away with, but will one of the right-wing group on the Court, most likely Kennedy but perhaps another, actually decide that way? All five of them supported a hold on enforcing the lower court decision against Wisconsin (that is, the lower court said that the gerrymander was illegal), so initial signs are not good. But again thanks to technology being as it is now so that it is easy to draw district lines that make it pretty much impossible for one party, usually Democrats, to ever win in most states in this country regardless of how the popular votes go. This needs to stop if we want American democracy to maybe, perhaps, stop falling apart as it seems to be. The Wisconsin case is extremely important, but will the Supreme Court actually change anything? I doubt it, but I want to be proven wrong.

Overall, despite how it may have sounded above, this is not an issue of partisanship, of wanting Democrats to win instead of Republicans. With fair lines both parties would win sometimes, and that is fine. This is an issue of fairness, of still being a nation of freedom and democracy, the nation holding the "lamp at the golden door". You cannot be the great nation we are without free and fair elections.

So finally, if Ossoff had won, that would have been amazing and a fantastic sign for 2018! However, how long could we have held that seat for? Until 2022 at most, I think, because after 2020 the Georgia Republicans would surely redo their gerrymander to get the partisan ratio there back to the point where a Democrat could never win. Georgia is a Republican state of course, but it should have at least one more Democratic representative as it has; this recent Daily Kos article goes over some maps showing possibilities. Considering the current makeup of the Supreme Court, even if Kennedy doesn't retire seeing this court give the anti-gerrymandering decision that is so badly needed seems unlikely. That North Carolina ruling is a good start, though. It just needs to be built on so maybe someday elections in this country actually represent the vote. It's either that or we keep slipping towards autocracy, probably...
 

Pyrokai

Member
I've long said gerrymandering, along with money in politics (Citizens United), and voter suppression are the main three reasons our democracy is in shambles.

At least SCOTUS is soon hearing the gerrymandering case
before Kennedys retirement and hopefully Ginsburg's hearse arrival
 

FyreWulff

Member
ahahaha i just remembered that Trump calling it mean was from a private conversation, so now Trump also basically gave whoever leaked it more credibility
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
o_O

I don't think he understands what he's admitting.

That would require actual thought. Trump is a purely reflexive person in the worst way imaginable. Dude wants credit for everything, regardless of how bad it makes him look.
 
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