General US Politics

[Slumber]

I don't get how the right wing, ESPECIALLY Trump, can simultaneously say shit like "Our military needs to look strong for the rest of the world", and then also say "Treat rocks like guns". What kind of insane, baby-soft military would act like that when they know the people they're going up against have no real means of harming them?

... you know, besides ones with authoritarian agendas.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

On 11/2/2018 at 3:47 PM, Res said:

It’s going to end in disaster and I don’t know how we can prevent it.

It’s a good time to remind people that undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes a year. We gain far more than they cost us.

The correct way to prevent this comes to down sane people voting in greater numbers than those that reject reality so that people who are willing to do their job of oversight on the President are in office and take action to have more of this happen.

Trump's base may not budge but independents and democrats will demand action if more is done to reveal who Donald Trump really is.

On 11/2/2018 at 5:38 PM, Slumber said:

I don't get how the right wing, ESPECIALLY Trump, can simultaneously say shit like "Our military needs to look strong for the rest of the world", and then also say "Treat rocks like guns". What kind of insane, baby-soft military would act like that when they know the people they're going up against have no real means of harming them?

... you know, besides ones with authoritarian agendas.

He appears to have backtracked a bit, probably just to save face. Wouldn't be surprised if he backtracks again at a rally though lol

The hate just keeps going... jeez.

So a woman admits that she faked the accusation against Kavanaugh and THAT should be investigated. But when people come forward to testify for the FBI investigation and there's candidates who claim their accusation is real and won't be down from it, that shouldn't be investigated? Genius.

 

Tallahasse Yoga Shooter revealed: A right-wing incel.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Dr. Tarrasque

[NoirCore]

Haven't really ventured much into this topic let alone posted in it, but just posting here to say that this Tuesday, I'll be helping the blue wave. I have a large yet non-violent hatred for Trump, his attitude/ideas (especially his anti-LGBT+ ones, speaking as a straight cis man), and disappointment for those who mimic and support his sentiments. Before the year of Trump's election, I used to be indifferent to politics because I didn't really understand them (not that I could vote in the past), but early on in 2016, I got why they are so divisive, and still get it. Voting feels very important this year, and I intend to get my vote in.

So yeah, I'm a Democrat, and I'm ready to do my part to help heal the country.

[Etrurian emperor]

Oh, the newest rounds of American election in two days already. That should be interesting.

But I'll keep my expectations low. No offence but I kinda lost faith in the American electorate, or at least the portion of it that thought voting Trump was a good idea. And considering those people seem fanatically loyal I doubt Trump has lost many voters, in fact he probably gained more traditionally Republican ones for filling the supreme court with republican judges. The migrant ''wave' conveniently moving to the border might keep his base motivated and I heard tales of the whole Kavanaugh debacle rallying the Republican base just as much as the Democrat one.  

Edited November 4, 2018 by Etrurian emperor

[Dr. Tarrasque]

GOP paying money to have "poll watchers"  or more likely, people to intimidate voters during election day. CNN wrote an article on Poll Watchers back in 2016 but a key takeaway from the poll watchers detail in Texas is the following:

Quote

Election season is almost over, but we need a strong finish on Tuesday to ensure an honest and fair election occurs here in Texas! Up and down the ballot, Republican victories are at stake and we cannot let critical polls go ‘un-watched’.

No subtlety whatsoever folks, just pure unadulterated hyperpartisan fuckery. It's the GOP admitting that they're scared of losing Texas because of Trump.

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

and I heard tales of the whole Kavanaugh debacle rallying the Republican base just as much as the Democrat one.  

Funny you mention the Kavanaugh debacle, The GOP members of the Judiciary committee continued manipulated investigations to paint the accusations in a bad light and echo the "Kavanaugh is innocent" talking point right before the election. Report is here and the reason I make the statement "continued manipulated investigations" is partially because the firm representing Deborah Ramirez is confirming that corroborators are being ignored, not to mention the report has no interest in Kavanaugh's perjury before the Senate during either of the 2 hearings.

I really hope the midterms open the door to Trump's impeachment and that he goes down as the worst President in the United States.

[Time the Crestfallen]

Senate results make me want to put a bullet in my head, but it's great to see that the Democrats are going to get control of the House.

[Slumber]

19 minutes ago, Time the Crestfallen said:

Senate results make me want to put a bullet in my head, but it's great to see that the Democrats are going to get control of the House.

We can stifle the country's bleeding for another 2 years, at least.

We still will need proper treatment in 2020.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Slumber

[Time the Crestfallen]

25 minutes ago, Slumber said:

We can stifle the country's bleeding for another 2 years, at least.

We still will need proper treatment in 2020.

Quite. At the very least, there's a lot of investigative things that can be done through the House. Analysts have been talking about subponeas and being able to get a hold Trump's tax returns, which will be amazing.

And watching Paul Ryan lose his job as Speaker will bring me so much personal satisfaction I could use the video/documentation of it as a substitution for porn for the next two years.

[Slumber]

8 minutes ago, Time the Crestfallen said:

Quite. At the very least, there's a lot of investigative things that can be done through the House. Analysts have been talking about subponeas and being able to get a hold Trump's tax returns, which will be amazing.

And watching Paul Ryan lose his job as Speaker will bring me so much personal satisfaction I could use the video/documentation of it as a substitution for porn for the next two years.

Politics have taught me to never trust anyone named Paul, Rick, Scott or Ryan. Especially if your full name is any combination of the two.

Paul Ryan's political career will be one of those that people would get super sad about if he wasn't such a massive wuss.

The journey from presidential hopeful to complete joke and the scapegoat for his party was... quite something. Losing his job knowing that the president he's sucked up to will hate him will make it so much better.

Then all of the stuff in between, like RATM telling him to fuck off during his run...

One can only hope Ted Cruz eventually gets a similarly fitting end to his political career.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Slumber

[Pixelman]

Some thoughts:

Looks like Mitt is going to Washington D.C. after all

Surprised Gillum lost, it seemed like he was winning

I don't want Nelson to lose he seems like a nice guy UPDATE: Seems he lost

Newsom seems to be on the trajectory to winning here in California. No one's surprised. Wonder how the props will go down

Scott Walker actually struggling

Beto seems like a nice guy, shame he's losing but it's to be expected

Dems didn't really win much here honestly. I'm watching the daily wire podcast and I agree with them in that nothing special really happened here. It followed trends usually followed after a presidential election. Some of the top progressive candidates (Gillum, Rourke) have lost their elections despite strong showings and dems are getting creamed in senate races. Blue Wave this is not.

Ben Shapiro: "The Democratic party is the party that has openly embraced anti-semitism" Yeah, okay. Give me a break.

Certain swing states (Florida, Ohio) going Republican will spell huge trouble for Democrats going into 2020.

That's all I have for now.

[Slumber]

14 minutes ago, Pixelman said:

Certain swing states (Florida, Ohio) going Republican will spell huge trouble for Democrats going into 2020.

That's all I have for now.

I don't see it being too huge of a problem.

Should Wisconsin go blue(Which is may), Michigan go blue(Which it probably will) and Pennsylvania stay blue(Which it has), it might help quite a bit in 2020. I don't think Trump is very well liked in those states currently, and them going for him in 2016 was a big reason he won. 

Should that hold true to 2020, there's no real legislative nonsense republicans can pull to stop those states from going blue. On the flip side, it might make getting Ohio and Florida harder for dems to pick up in general in the future.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Slumber

[Time the Crestfallen]

I'm inclined to agree with Pixelman tbh. Here's how I see this going down:

-Even if the House flipping blue means that the Mueller investigation finds conclusive evidence that Trump colluded with Russia or any number of other things, he won't get impeached. Republican voters will just call it fake news because a 'healthy' diet of Fox News means that they would find it more likely that the entirety of the FBI is compromised by (((The Deep State))) than the idea that a multi-millionaire New York real-estate tycoon could be corrupt and the Republicans will do nothing because they know they can get away with it.

-2020 elections come around and to be frank, I honestly don't believe that Trump will want to run for a second term by virtue of being absolutely miserable as President

By this point, the economic consequences of Trump's policies will start to kick in resulting in either one of two things;

-If another Republican won the presidency, them and Fox News will blame the consequences of Democrat obstructionism and because the Dems are fucking spineless and think that having the moral high-ground is more important than anything, they'll cave in and be 'amicable to compromise' which in reality will just mean they'll let the Republicans pass whatever the fuck they want.

-If a Democrat wins, Republicans and Fox News will somehow spin it so that the Democrats are the direct cause of them (a.la how some people honestly believe that Obama caused the housing crisis) and then use their Senate majority to obstruct any policy that might reverse said consequences, which will be passed off as the Democrats doing nothing to fix the problem leading to a complete electoral washout in the mid-terms.

Cynical? Maybe, but any ability I had to be optimistic about politics died a long time ago.

[Slumber]

I realize how stupid it is to be optimistic at this point. But I'll try. 

[Sunwoo]

I know I rarely post here (if ever), but I just wanted to say that I actually went out and cast my ballot after work today.

Based on the current tally (final results not in yet), our district is literally 50-50, with one candidate leading the other by literally ~50 votes. I can officially say my vote did actually matter.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Well, I had hoped for Beto to win, against all odds but as it was expected, more Texans decided to bend to the will of Trump and the Anti-Socialist rhetoric, maybe the Caravan in some areas but from what I've seen, Texans living closer to the border appear to think that the armed militia punks going to the border are a bigger issue than the caravan itself.

If the projected Democrat takeover of the house happens, that's good, the situation's a least better off than it was but a Senate win as well would've been stronger. Having said that... the results I was more focused on disturb me a bit.

Steve King and Ron DeSantis: Neither of these 2 Republicans should've won and I wonder why they did. Is the Trump endorsement that powerful or is it simply that people were that misinformed and doubtful that these 2 fuckers have close ties with White Supremacists? I really hope it's lack of and misinformation that allowed them to win...

Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter, Carol Miller: 2 of these fuckers were indicted and their corruption revealed and yet they somehow managed to win? The fuck happened to draining the Swamp? Props to Richard Ojeda for closing the 40 point gap that Trump made but I'm still surprised that Carol Miller beat him. What did she even do? It literally looks like the Trump endorsement carried her to victory and another lost opportunity to drain the swamp.

Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan: Maybe it's because I saw the FBI hearings and followed what was going on with the memos and Nunes' fuckery but these 2 fuckers should've been easy pickings because of their irrational loyalty to Trump. Jordan's running in Ohio which is a swing state so I guess that's an easy pass but Nunes is in California so either the dude's got control of a safe space that doesn't pay attention or the challengers for both these assholes were just weak.

Rick Scott: Similar to King and DeSantis but I guess some would sum it up with "It's Florida dude". Close race though.

 

On a different subject, found something interesting in the sea of Trump bullshit: Trump had cut funding used to counter Neo-Nazi/White Supremacists violence. 

 

Yes, Election Day SHOULD be a Holiday. Just trade it for Columbus Day already

Edited November 7, 2018 by Dr. Tarrasque

[eclipse]

Hawaii turned out exactly as I predicted.  Which isn't surprising, given how much we "adore" Trump.

[The Geek]

Oregon's votes came out as expected too.  Knute Buehler's attempt to sell himself as a Democrat-lite didn't work and Kate Brown kept her governor's seat.  The measure to publicly fund affordable housing won, while the measures to ban taxes on "groceries" (actually e-cigarettes and soda), increase the number of votes needed to raise taxes (but not to lower them), end Oregon's sanctuary state status, and end public funding of abortion all failed.

[Johann]

MA went as I expected; mostly Democrat wins (Warren, Healy), and the only Republican wins were incumbents, particularly the ever-popular Baker. Business as usual here.

[Shoblongoo]

Aight---Dems did what they need to do last night.

• Retook the House
• Got subpoena power 
• Actually competed at the state level and won some governorships (part of the problem in 2016 with the scarcity of viable candidates in the Democratic field is that popular and high-profile governorships have historically been the springboard for successful presidential campaigns--by neglecting state races and not having superstar governors rise to prominence within the Democratic Party, the Party set the stage for an election cycle where they didn't really have anyone except some crusty old Senators to take the field)

Florida was a bit of a shitshow.

Its one of the three big bellwether states whose political climate indicates whether or not Trump has the support to win reelection in 2020--the fact that we're halfway there and Florida is still going Red is not good.

...on the other hand...

The Republican margin of victory in Florida was like 80,000 votes in a state of 21 million people. And while Florida didn't elect a Democrat in any state-level races, they did do something else that's particularly noteworthy.

Florida voters passed a ballot measure restoring voting rights to 1.5 million (predominantly African American) disenfranchised persons who had been banned from voting as part of a criminal sentence. Provided that the persons have completed the rest of their sentence, and provided that the criminal conviction was not for murder or a felony sex offense.


>>>>>>>80,000 voter margin of victory 

>>>>>>>>>>>1.5 million new voters

____________________


Speaks to the level of voter suppression and thieving dickery Republicans resort to to win some of these elections that they're getting governorships and Senate Seats with those kinds of margins in states where they're stopping that many people from even going to the polls.

Competitive Florida elections are rarely decided by more than 1-2% margins.

1.5 million banned persons comes out to 9.2% of the state's entire voting age population. (Gotta wonder what the past few elections would have looked like if Florida wasn't actively suppressing that vote)

...thats just a tadbit undemocratic of them... 
 
Still. They're here now. They're restored. And Florida 2020 is looking very, very interesting if those numbers break down the way I think they're going to. 

 

Edited November 7, 2018 by Shoblongoo

[Slumber]

Minnesota went all blue, which is nice. Every level of the state government is blue. 

I think people saw Dayton doing a good job. Business has been booming in MN under him, and the Republican smear campaigns held little weight to people who knew this. As a state that typically switches up the governors by party every 2 terms, Walz beating Johnson so handily should say something. 

EDIT: Scratch that, MN senate is still red.

Either way, 2/3 control of the state government is better than the 1/3 we had before.

Edited November 7, 2018 by Slumber

[Slumber]

Double post, but new topic:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-resigns-at-trumps-request/2018/11/07/d1b7a214-e144-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html?utm_term=.3089a46426bf

Sessions has been fired(Technically he resigned, but he was told by Trump to resign).

 

[Sunwoo]

I think my district has officially flipped to Democratic. Apparently it was still a really close race.

[Etrurian emperor]

So what does Sessions getting fired mean? Does it mean Trump feels threatened by the election outcome or does it mean he feels emboldened enough to go this far?

[Pixelman]

As someone who lives in California, I was quite surprised Prop 6 (repealing the gas tax) wasn't passed

Most reports indicated a majority of Californians (59% I believe) disliked the tax, so to see it remain must be an upset to lower tax advocates

And with Gavin Newsom becoming governor (ehhhh), I wonder how a Republican will be able to take back the Governor's seat in California. I think they ought to nominate a more center-right candidate like, say, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts or Larry Hogan of Maryland in the future. A liberal Republican, essentially.

[DarthR0xas]

Florida kinda surprised me. Well, Rick Scott didn't. Many people say there's a red wave, or a blue wave, but in my opinion there's is neither, and in truth there is a wave of "anti-establishment" sweeping the country (This might pose a problem for me personally with the job I hope to get but that's beside the point). Ricky ran on a platform that he would break said establishment, and that he was a Washington Outsider. This is kinda true, but he still associated with all the same people and gets money from the same corporations as the establishment he is supposedly against. But Nelson really didn't have a chance. I don't really know anyone who likes Bill Nelson here in Florida, they just say "Well, he's better than Rick Scott", which is a low bar to pass. He did barely win, so there's that.

But Gillum losing really surprised me. I saw next to no support for DeSantes, and literally one of his ads, which was on Election Day. Sure, he was a bit of an extremist (If I remember correctly), but I thought he had a good shot. My school ran an election, and the results were literally the opposite of the actual election. Bill Nelson won by like 3 votes, and Gillum swept DeSantes. Funny thing is, I forgot that Gillum was running against someone, so I get onto the little voting website they had us go to, and I see Ron Desantes and think "Wait, who was that". That's more of a "I need to pay more attention to my state's politics" than any slander against our soon to be governor.

32 minutes ago, Pixelman said:

I think they ought to nominate a more center-right candidate like, say, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts or Larry Hogan of Maryland in the future. A liberal Republican, essentially.

I hope something like this occurs elsewhere, as opposed to two extremes running, we get two people who are centrist, agree on some issues, respectfully disagree on others. It won't make for fun headlines. "Smith says that John Doe's position on Marajuana doesn't factor in some health risks, John Doe says he needs to look more into it and thanks Smith for pointing out an aspect he needs to improve on" doesn't have the same impact as "Trump calls opponent a *censored*" Sensationalism and money needs to be eliminated from politics in my humble opinion.