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On November 07 2018 16:30 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 16:14 Kyadytim wrote:On November 07 2018 15:39 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 15:22 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 15:09 Introvert wrote:On November 07 2018 14:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 07 2018 14:36 Introvert wrote:
If Walker holds I will be even happier after tonight. Another person the left hates, maybe able to squeak it out.
Dems do what the out party does in midterms, while the Senate look good, and the state level is alright for the GOP and well. 2020 has a lot of red states, but they are very red, and in presidential election years, they will prob stay that way.
with a president like trump, many were hoping a wipe out ala 2010. not so.
meanwhile Democrats running as moderates won lots of red seats. the presidential race, however, isnt set up that way. I'm so interested in how the next two years go on. if trump can hover at 45%ish percent...
for some context
If we're interpreting public opinion, why not use popular vote totals rather than number of seats changed? Otherwise you could just be reading how tough a map it was, how gerrymandered it was, how many seats they had to lose, or some similar confounding factor. because that isnt how we do elections? seems like a hard concept for some. also any popular vote result that doesnt account that CA has a primary system where the top two can be Democrats doesnt matter anyways. and trump at 45 is based on recent polls. again, this election looks a lot like a regular midterm, besides the Senate. on to the next fight. I feel good about where we are anyways. the most radical of the Democrats lost most races, while the moderates won. should be a good lesson going forwards. and expect the GOP to learn from the Democrats on the fundraising, I'm sure that put many of these people over the top. GOP dont let the Democrats be the best st something for long. But you're not talking about how we do elections, you're talking about whether voters repudiated Trump's agenda. CA issues aside, popular vote is the most straightforward way to answer what the voters thought. Net seat change is really weirdly roundabout - the number is just as affected by how poorly the minority party did last time as how well they did this time. In the extreme case Republicans could have won every seat last time, and Democrats could flip 217 (!) seats. By your measure that would be the biggest repudiation of the President's agenda of all time - and yet they wouldn't even have taken a majority! The "typical midterm" line is strange too, considering a "typical midterm" is a repudiation of the President's agenda. Maybe it's not a record-breaking repudiation, but at a bare minimum if voters favored the opposition party by 8 points, it's almost tautological to say that reflects them opposing the party in power. you haven't made the case for why the national total should matter at all. there are hundreds of individual elections. to determine if there is the national vote matters you have to work out if that fact affected anything. the fact that people are voting in local elections matters. I'm sure you can argue for the national vote mattering, but it's not self-evident, at least in most cases. The national vote total is a better reflection of that nebulous concept called "the will of the people" than the ratio of actual winners, because first past the post across a series of parallel elections can cause the percent of offices won to diverge from the percent of votes won. You should be making the case that the results of our antiquated system of apportioning offices based on frequently redrawn geographic areas is a better way of measuring what voters actually want than just looking at the total number of votes, not the other way around. wait, do you know what I am arguing? I am arguing that election results matter more. you just identified the problem. the "will of the people" only has one tangible metric: elections. as the saying goes "all politics is local" and that's just we saw. people dont vote in a national vote, they vote for and against specific candidates. aggregate votes mean far less than actual results. btw, in 2010 when dems got stomped they were strangely silent on total votes. in fact I think obama after a midterm also said something like "those of you who voted I hear you. but the 2/3rds of you who didnt vote, I hear you to." disconnected. certainly didnt teach him a thing.
There's a weird circular argument underlying this. Democracy justifies itself on designing elections which follow the will of the people, and yet here you are arguing the only tangible metric we have for the will of the people is election results, ignoring any other metrics of what the people as a whole actually think. This approach defines away the problem of "what if our elections don't accurately reflect the will of the people?" because if our only metric for "will of the people" is election results, it's impossible for them to reflect anything else. Even if we redesigned the system so only Dick Cheney, Steve Bannon, and Vladimir Putin got votes that counted, the election results would still reflect the "will of the people" as long as "will of the people" is defined as whatever the most recent election results are.
The fact is, the Democrats had massive systemic disadvantages in the house. Part of this is just Republicans with incumbency advantage, and part of it is natural clustering of Dem-friendly populations, but a huge factor here is gerrymandered districts. That means Dems had to pull way ahead just to barely take a majority. Effectively, they started the night at -6% or so, through no fault of their own due to systemic factors.
I'm not bringing this up just to whine, but given such a massive disadvantage, if voters still supported them enough to give them a healthy majority anyway, it's a bit dense to ignore that context and just say "well they didn't win that big of a majority, voters must not have supported them that much after all." This wasn't a 51-49, it was more like a 54-46, and in interpreting "the will of the people" it should be treated as such.
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On November 07 2018 21:44 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 21:39 Silvanel wrote:
If the demographic trends hold i think in 10-20 years we might see big democratic states go "No taxation without FAIR representation". You think Illinois will be solvent in 20 years? Hahaha! Lowest credit rating of any state Municipal bonds junk rating Pension funds totally broke Anyone follow economic news here?
Iliionois is bad example since its one of few states which population is actually decreasing. Anyway, perhaps that wont be necessary, looking at population changes In 20 years Texas and Arizona might be voting democrat (meaning they might become swing states).
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On November 07 2018 18:00 Kyadytim wrote:
To use a Starcraft analogy, the Republican party is playing Starcraft on a machine with hacks installed. They didn't install the hacks, but they're lying about having them and refusing to turn them off, and instead leveraging them for every advantage they can get. And then they're pointing to their ladder ranking and head to head winrates as evidence of how good they are at the game. Obviously, Democrats don't want to use ladder rankings or head to head winrates as a measure of comparative skill, because Republicans are hacking. And the underlying issue that I keep talking about is that Democrats are getting sick of playing Starcraft against a hacker.
In this analogy, playing Starcraft against someone is participating in the same democratic process with an opposing party and respecting its outcomes.
The problem with your analogy is that democrats were playing on the hacks computer for a long time and only seem to care now that the Republicans have their turn.
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On November 07 2018 22:51 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 18:00 Kyadytim wrote:
To use a Starcraft analogy, the Republican party is playing Starcraft on a machine with hacks installed. They didn't install the hacks, but they're lying about having them and refusing to turn them off, and instead leveraging them for every advantage they can get. And then they're pointing to their ladder ranking and head to head winrates as evidence of how good they are at the game. Obviously, Democrats don't want to use ladder rankings or head to head winrates as a measure of comparative skill, because Republicans are hacking. And the underlying issue that I keep talking about is that Democrats are getting sick of playing Starcraft against a hacker.
In this analogy, playing Starcraft against someone is participating in the same democratic process with an opposing party and respecting its outcomes. The problem with your analogy is that democrats were playing on the hacks computer for a long time and only seem to care now that the Republicans have their turn.
How so? I'm genuinly interested to hear in which ways Democrats have not played fairly in elections.
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If we regard the "hacks" as including inherent geographical advantages relative to the urban/rural divide, then Dems have never really been able to utilize them. Given the clustering of leftists generally, they probably never will.
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On November 07 2018 22:59 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 22:51 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On November 07 2018 18:00 Kyadytim wrote:
To use a Starcraft analogy, the Republican party is playing Starcraft on a machine with hacks installed. They didn't install the hacks, but they're lying about having them and refusing to turn them off, and instead leveraging them for every advantage they can get. And then they're pointing to their ladder ranking and head to head winrates as evidence of how good they are at the game. Obviously, Democrats don't want to use ladder rankings or head to head winrates as a measure of comparative skill, because Republicans are hacking. And the underlying issue that I keep talking about is that Democrats are getting sick of playing Starcraft against a hacker.
In this analogy, playing Starcraft against someone is participating in the same democratic process with an opposing party and respecting its outcomes. The problem with your analogy is that democrats were playing on the hacks computer for a long time and only seem to care now that the Republicans have their turn. How so? I'm genuinly interested to hear in which ways Democrats have not played fairly in elections.
Gerrymandering wasn't invented by the Republicans for this election. The party in power has been doing it for centuries in this country.
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Give an example. You basically wrote that the democratic party gerrymanders just as long as the Republican party. It is strange though. You seem perfectly happy with gerrymandering in any case. This to me says that you don't beleive in democratic institutions.
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The Dems have definitely gerrymandered before, but again, gerrymandering does not benefit everyone equally. The more spread out and geographically disparate a party is, the more utility gerrymandering provides.
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The gerrymandering of house seats is pretty egregious and extremely difficult to defend in general, but I am sure you could find some historically democratic districts with bizarre boundaries also.
That is ENTIRELY different than the argument being made here about the senate and the popular vote in general (electoral college in presidential years). People who bash on those are quick to point out the arguments in favor of the popular vote, but never even bother to address the arguments against it. Which have existed for 250 years and are why the systems exist so they don't exactly need listed out.
Furthermore I don't think EU posters in general understand the sheer geographical and social differences present. We are talking Estonia to France type levels pretty easily. The concern was made about how all the left leaning voters from the populations centers would begin to feel disenfranchised and would promote social unrest. Look at any Election Map. The exact same thing is true for all those vast expanses of red areas that would feel the exact same way if people from the coasts were dictating there day to day lives from THOUSANDS of miles away and they had no representation. Like pretty much any issue there is clearly two sides to it, and it is hard to imagine a nice, clean solution to the undeniably shitty situation.
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On November 07 2018 23:09 farvacola wrote:
The Dems have definitely gerrymandered before, but again, gerrymandering does not benefit everyone equally. The more spread out and geographically disparate a party is, the more utility gerrymandering provides.
I don't disagree with that. When you make something a partisan issue by only supporting it when it stops benefiting you and you're in the political climate of winning I don't expect any change to happen.
When redistricting happens in 2020, do you expect democrat controlled areas to make favorable districts or "fair" districts whatever that means.
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And Trump is already threatening to investigate the Democrats. At least he is consistent.
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On November 07 2018 23:33 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 23:09 farvacola wrote:
The Dems have definitely gerrymandered before, but again, gerrymandering does not benefit everyone equally. The more spread out and geographically disparate a party is, the more utility gerrymandering provides. I don't disagree with that. When you make something a partisan issue by only supporting it when it stops benefiting you and you're in the political climate of winning I don't expect any change to happen. When redistricting happens in 2020, do you expect democrat controlled areas to make favorable districts or "fair" districts whatever that means.
Depends on the area, California rightly uses an independent commission to do it to at least somewhat minimize bias. It would be nice if more states did that at least.
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On November 08 2018 00:10 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 23:33 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On November 07 2018 23:09 farvacola wrote:
The Dems have definitely gerrymandered before, but again, gerrymandering does not benefit everyone equally. The more spread out and geographically disparate a party is, the more utility gerrymandering provides. I don't disagree with that. When you make something a partisan issue by only supporting it when it stops benefiting you and you're in the political climate of winning I don't expect any change to happen. When redistricting happens in 2020, do you expect democrat controlled areas to make favorable districts or "fair" districts whatever that means. Depends on the area, California rightly uses an independent commission to do it to at least somewhat minimize bias. It would be nice if more states did that at least.
So lets focus on states that use legislature instead of an independent commission since a plurality of state use such methods. I don't disagree with you that federal requirements to enforce an independent bipartisan commission would be better. I also expect such a requirement to never happen due to states rights.
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It looks like Lucy McBath will beat Karen Handel in Georgia's 6th District. I think Abrams' performance in metro Atlanta is what got this one over the edge. Handel was elected a year half ago in one of the most expensive house races in history when Tom Price left the seat to become HHS Secretary, a position he resigned after lavish spending on the government dime. This is Newt Gingrich's old seat (though the district has changed a little since he held it), so a win is in the same tier as Spanberger beating Brat in Virginia's 7th District, which is Eric Cantor's seat.
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Now that I've slept on it and the disappointment's somewhat worn off, it's amazing that a Democrat was able to get so much support in Texas. Being only 2.6% behind is not something to sneeze at, and perhaps when Cruz is up for reelection in 2024, we could vote in a Democrat. I highly doubt John Cornyn will come anywhere remotely close to being beaten by a Democrat in 2020, though
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I look forward to Republicans crying about obstructionism without a hint of self reflection.
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On November 08 2018 00:58 Gorsameth wrote:
I look forward to Republicans crying about obstructionism without a hint of self reflection.
All budget measures must start in the house, so they won’t be able to cry that much without pay the price.
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Please no pelosi speaker. Please no pelosi speaker. Please no pelosi speaker.
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United States42695 Posts
On November 07 2018 13:05 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2018 13:03 Doodsmack wrote:
Beautiful quote. Let the rains come.
This is a great example of overreach. unless there is actual collusion (lol) it's a mistake.
You’re aware that there is evidence of collusion at this point, just not tit for tat as far as I know. The Trump campaign knowingly accepted help from Putin, including the hacking of Clinton’s email server. That’s established at this point. It’s not a partisan issue, it actually happened.
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EPT
