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MASSIVE difference. Denver in 2008 was clean and okay. It wasn't my bag, but it seemed clean and serene. Denver in 2017-2018 had homeless people up the ass, filth on the streets, etc.
The AZ vote was stuck at 54%. It just jumped to 66%, they dumped 12% of the total vote in the past half hour.
It's overwhelmingly going to Lake and Masters:
Of the 54,000 votes from Maricopa they finally posted, 70% going to Republicans. And vote split my ass, the totals are only 1-2% variant between all the Offices, State or National or Local by party. Which should make you suspect Georgia big league.
you can't beat "something" with "nothing"
thoughts on the "red ripple" and american tribal politics
i know a lot of people were expecting a “red wave” but as i had been cautioning, that’s A LOT harder than it looks and despite massive and widespread anger at team donkey over the economy, inflation, covid, crime, schools, and 30 other things, in the end there is an old political adage that generally dominates:
“you can’t beat something with nothing.”
and with a few notable exceptions, the GOP pretty much ran “nothing” and this matters because US politics is mostly about inertia and “nothing goes nowhere.”
on the order of 80% of americans vote a “straight” party ticket of either all blue or all red.
it’s far less about “candidate” than about “team and about tribe” and to move people off their spot requires vast impetus.
you are not asking them to pick you.
you are asking them to change families.
you need a seriously compelling offer to get people to split from their party. the systemic structure and the societal mindset vastly favors staying put and to get the rock moving is a herculean undertaking.
in most cases, the characters are less important than one would think.
with a few notable exceptions (like ron desantis or rand paul or kari lake) the GOP did not really stand for much in any high profile or cohesive sense. they did not state as a simple positive “this is who we are, this is what we will stand for, and this is what we will do.”
changing teams requires a reason to join the new team.
and that was mostly absent.
there was no solution.
there was no dream into which to buy.
there was oz and walker blowing easy pick ups (though the latter may get a run off) in an environment where 75% of the country thinks it’s going in the wrong direction.
just agreeing with voters that “this is not going well” will not make them follow a candidate, much less leave their political family for a new one.
voters desperately wanted to get on board with a plan. but there was no plan.
there was the party of mitch fricking mcconnell who is about as inspiring as a bag of wet paper towels and vague hand waving from leadership.
my advice to team elephant is simple:
blaming "the system" or "mail in" misses the point.
people voted for courage, vision, and character.
go find some or get used to losing.
the absolute red rout in florida is telling. districts that NEVER go red went red because there was a leader. there was a vision. and there was a brave guy who stood tall and faced down the whole rest of the country and the federal government along with it to protect the rights of floridians.
there was confidence, swagger, and stature.
there was character.
and the people fricking love him for it. he flipped the “straight tickets” past crimson and into outright ruby and everyone got to come along, house, senate, and dogcatcher. ...
the gingrich congress was that wild rarity: real GOP congressional leadership with an actual plan that could be stated as a positive and taken to the american people as achievable agenda.
it was a doable program of vision, courage, and change.
and people will get behind that.
they drove a red wave in the face of the 2 bad years that began the clinton presidency by running on fiscal responsibility, freedom, and smaller government.
they drove this by taking it past hand waving and “ideas and ideals campaigning” by putting it all on paper as a cohesive agenda, making simple, explicit promises, and writing all the bills to be submitted, and making them available for inspection.
then they stood up, signed it, and promised, if elected, to run this exact playbook.
how, in the post covid world, this opportunity to stand up for balanced budgets, personal freedom, liberty not lockdown, and school choice not “schools choose what’s best for you” went begging simply baffles me.
I thought 43 was odd too. Kari made a post after 4AM that looks promising.
We still cannot figure out fucking elections? Seriously?
Looks like Patrick and I posted the same shit.
Sure, it’s easy to scapegoat Donald Trump for all of the bad showings. But who is actually excited to elevate Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy into positions of power? What exactly is the GOP agenda, other than to slow down the Biden Administration agenda?
AmericanKulak says
MASSIVE difference. Denver in 2008 was clean and okay. It wasn't my bag, but it seemed clean and serene. Denver in 2017-2018 had homeless people up the ass, filth on the streets, etc.
I think it was the first legal pot state if I recall correctly. The only one in the country.
Still no movement in AZ? WTF
Shit, like I mentioned elsewhere, I just realized that they never asked me for ID.
All hail pussy hat voters, noble gynopatriots of the Soy Republic and Karentocracy.
The demographic that consistently vote for tyranny over any other?
College-educated women.
The new election theft cover to emerge in the past twenty-four hours?
Baby killing.
https://youtu.be/r8FgjdbPaEA
It's litteraly Idiocracy movie.
RC2006 says
https://youtu.be/r8FgjdbPaEA
It's litteraly Idiocracy movie.
yeah but I still think Jen fucks like a race horse! she's red hot in her deranged leftoid way
In addition to abortion, those who wished to express, via ballots, their anger at the Corona abusers and opportunists faced strong headwinds.
First, most people vote by heritage. Statistics show that people are far more likely to adopt their parents’ political affiliation than they are to embrace their parents’ religion. While people like to think they make up their own minds, the sociopolitical grousing that seven year-olds hear at the dinner table resonates for a lifetime.
Second, people vote by self-identity. People like to consider themselves to be young and cool. Young people can’t bring themselves to vote for Republicans because doing so would make them feel unhip and different from their peers. Additionally, most young people haven’t worked hard enough to think about paying high taxes.
Given the foregoing, there aren’t many persuadable voters left. And Democrats are the party of the rich. They have multi-fold more money to spend on ads and electoral tactics than do Republicans. And the media’s in the bag for the donkeys.
Still, it’s easy to be disappointed by the very short memory people showed regarding all of the destructive, oppressive government Covid-zero edicts of the past 32 months. And it’s easy to be astounded that Democrats elected, to a six-year term, a senator who can’t even process basic concepts or coherently express simple ideas. Though he may end up being a visible symbol of vaxx injury.
People need to stop thinking that governments have all of the power to determine how the world works. Yes, governments hold a lot of cards. But governments can’t function without mass compliance. There are way too many of us to control without mass-fining or imprisonment or turning automatic weapons on us. They aren’t ready for the latter two options. At least not yet. And people could easily jam the courts by challenging various forms of governmental chicanery.
Overall, people needed to, and still need to, generally say “No” in their everyday lives. Part of this can be done by simply by refusing to obey. For example, people could have stopped the employer vaxx mandates in their tracks. If 20% of workers had refused to inject, their employers, schools, hospitals, garbage collection, transportation and every other sector could have been shut down. If this had happened, the mandates would quickly have disappeared, without any litigation or regulatory carve-outs.
Active opposition could also have changed the Scamdemic’s course. Parents and others could have picketed closed schools. Those with means could have—as some did—enrolled their kids in private schools. Scofflaws could have filled police-taped parks. People could have walked maskless through stores in such large numbers that the employees couldn’t have harassed them all. People could have displayed protest signs in their dwellings’ windows and on their cars. They could have written messages in public spaces. With chalk, of course.
The central problem was that too many people foolishly believed for too long that the virus threatened everyone and that lockdowns/school closures, masks, tests and shots were good ideas or that these measures would promptly be lifted.
Too many others were happy to get free money to stay home. This is where Trump and many other Republicans messed up. They never should have opened the Coronamania door by agreeing to even a two-week shutdown. Nor, via the CARES Act, should they have printed six trillion dollars to underwrite viral theater. They shouldn’t have subsidized hospitals or undertakers to encourage the misattribution, to Covid, of deaths of old, sick people. The Republicans should have leveled with people about, and exposed people to, the true economic—and therefore, human—costs of inducing a societal coma. They shouldn’t have economically anesthetized society to render it unaware of the actual costs of locking down. Trump also shouldn’t have pushed Operation Warp Speed or boasted about the lousy shots. When smarts and conviction were needed, he was naive and weak. His political days should be done.
Electorally thumping the Democrat Corona authoritarians would have been nice. But many Republicans also underperformed during the Scamdemic, though for a significantly shorter time.
Regardless, there were—and still are—many ways beside voting to let other people and government know that you disagreed with the craziness, and still do. Overall, and throughout, people have been too passive and afraid to disagree, to defy obviously abusive governments or to make a scene.
Peoples’ slowness to see the Scam, their naive belief in the Covid interventions, and their timidity and passivity hurt us worse than did the recent election. Though those of us who spoke against, and by their actions defied, the madness had an uphill battle because we were in the minority.
@ggreenwald
1h
Good news! In light of the relatively good outcome for Democrats in the 2022 midterms, there have been no claims about Russian interference in the election. Russia is accused of interfering in Our Democracy only when Democrats do not win.
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Voting in person should also let you know if someone else already voted in your name.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested.