US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Cobra-D » Sun Feb 04, 2018 10:52 pm

Arthur jones manage to win the GOP primaries... by being the only one running in the GOP primary, which mean he gets to face either Dan Lipinsk or Marie Newman but most likely Lipinsk for Illinois 3rd Congressional District.

Now a little bit about Arthur, he was a former leader of the American Nazi Party(probably joined by mistake, it happens) but now runs the group called the America First Committee. Which is very accepting of any new members, just you know, as long as they're white...and non-Jewish.


Oh and he also thinks the holocaust is a lie, which is just stupid, unless he wins in which case maybe he's right, I mean do we even know if Jews even exist? I've never seen them.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby cmsellers » Mon Feb 05, 2018 12:43 am

Cobra-D wrote:Oh and he also thinks the holocaust is a lie, which is just stupid, unless he wins in which case maybe he's right, I mean do we even know if Jews even exist? I've never seen them.

Avi, Djilbouti Dan, and DP all claim to be Jews, but they also all claim to be from California. How do we know that California is a real place, and not just invented by Democrats for votes and/or by Rush Limbaugh for ratings? (I mean, sure, I've been to "California" twice but one time it looked like Oregon and the other time it looked like Mexico. It's like the people running the con can't even keep their stories straight.)
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Mon Feb 05, 2018 2:22 am

May I interest you all in the traditional Californian beverage that is the Portland horchata?
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Absentia » Thu Mar 15, 2018 6:41 am

Here is a promising article from 538 about the recent special election in Pennsylvania's 18th House District, which the Democrat appears to have won by a hair. The promising part is that PA-18 went for Trump by 22 points in 2016. If a district like PA-18 is the break-even point, their model suggests that Democrats will pick up 118 seats in November.

Realistically it isn't likely that the number will be that high, but it's another in a long series of blue-leaning indicators.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:12 am

Yeah, Nate Silver had an article on that as well today.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/th ... a-tsunami/

It's interesting that the best indicator for Democrats right now is the special election results. If "the only poll that matters is the one at the ballot box", as many folks have said since the 2016 election, then the GOP reaction should now switch from mere anxiety to a desperate sprint for higher ground to avoid the coming tsunami.

For those of us who think polls matter, though, it's worth mentioning that the Democratic edge on the generic ballot has ebbed some since its peak in late December and early January. Right now they have a 9-point advantage, which is enough to make them the favorite to win the House, but not enough to guarantee it or portend a historic wave. Likewise, Trump's approval rating has been above the 40 percent mark for over a month now, better than it's been since last May. What that would suggest is that the GOP base is holding pretty steady but isn't turning out at the same rate as Democrats are, which is the "enthusiasm gap" referred to in the article.

In that case, the lesson for the GOP is that all is not necessarily lost, but they need to motivate their base in order to limit the bleeding as much as possible. That's hard to do in a special election with all of one House seat at stake, or when you're asking people to stand behind a Roy Moore. However, when the House majority itself is at stake, or worse yet the Senate majority that allows them to confirm conservative judges, I suspect they'll find it much easier to get their voters to the polls.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Thu Mar 15, 2018 11:26 am

If they win by 9 points, I think that'd be more than enough to take the House, though not by a landslide. They only need in the realm of 20-something seats, iirc. I should also point out that turnout in Alabama and this race were about at the levels you'd expect from a typical midterm--if not on the Republican side, and that's why results have been so lopsided. I don't really know what more the GOP can do. They're spending money and getting Pence or Trump to come down and speak depending on the sensibilities of the district/state, but it hasn't really amounted to much. I also think the GOP has a problem with recruiting good candidates in general, and especially now in a year like this where Republican candidates are hesitant to get in a race they may lose. So there's a chance we'll be seeing at least one more almost Roy-Moore level bad candidate and probably a lot more poor strategic candidates like Saccone.

Although Clinton may have once again delivered for Republicans, because it's what she does best, when she recently decided to go to India and be like "Well, all the people who aren't backwards-looking voted for me" because I guess she was sad that people weren't talking about her deplorables comment much anymore.

Though I do think the Democrats would be smart to pick a progressive in 2020 (at least on economic issues), Lamb getting elected was, I think, a good indicator that they need to focus on finding good fits for each district/state rather than just running to the left. People derided Lamb as a Republican running on the Democratic ticket, but he certainly doesn't support that tax plan and supports unions, so it's more like he's a bit of a throwback to a more labor focused Democrat.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:47 pm

Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:If they win by 9 points, I think that'd be more than enough to take the House, though not by a landslide. They only need in the realm of 20-something seats, iirc.


If.

Generic ballot polls have a margin of error of about +/- 5 percentage points according to 538. So an advantage of 9 percent really means if the election were held today, we can be highly confident that Democrats would win the popular vote by a margin between 4 and 14 percent. Meanwhile, the GOP's various districting advantages mean that Democrats need to win the popular vote by at least 6-7 percent to be confident of winning the House, so a margin of 4-5 percent would probably mean the GOP holding on by the skin of its teeth.

In other words, 9 percent on the generic ballot makes the Democrats highly likely to win the House, but it means there are still some plausible scenarios where they fall short. That's the reason why the decline since December is significant--when the Democrats had a 12-point advantage, that meant high confidence of a result between 7 and 17 percent, and any result in that range would mean the Democrats take the House. So at that point folks like us could more or less take it easy, and now not so much.

I should also point out that turnout in Alabama and this race were about at the levels you'd expect from a typical midterm--if not on the Republican side, and that's why results have been so lopsided. I don't really know what more the GOP can do.


Well, I'd certainly suggest praying to every God ever conceived of that there isn't a recession before November, or the GOP's House caucus will be emptier than a NAMBLA daycare center.
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Last edited by Crimson847 on Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby cmsellers » Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:56 pm

A 22-point swing would be enough to flip the district I live in, and even a 17-point swing would make it a valid target. Since it includes a lot of the rich suburbs of Austin, it seems like a relatively good target to attempt to flip in a "tsunami" election. However one thing about Lamb is that he was a relatively conservative candidate, in ways that fit with his district.

In my district, I imagine a Lamb-like candidate would be a gun owner who opposes a blanket ban on "assault weapons," who is fiscally conservative, and who like Lamb vows not to support Pelosi. All of the Democrats running either supported an "assault weapons" ban or were silent on the issue, but Kathi Thomas, the nominee last time, identifies as fiscally conservative and as a bonus identifies as a devout Christian without compromising on social issues. So naturally, I voted for her. (It doesn't hurt that I'm also moderately fiscally conservative myself.)

Unfortunately, she lost, and the top two candidates (there will be a runoff) are a guy who's fairly liberal (though mostly in ways I'm on board with) and a woman who identifies as a progressive and who brags about co-writing the gas tax Texas passed in 2003. (While I think gas taxes are a good idea because they reduce externalities, they're also regressive taxes and I don't think bragging about your involvement is wise move in Texas.)

Whoever wins the runoff, it looks like the nominee will be a fairly orthodox liberal Democrat who doesn't compromise on any issues. And while Doug Jones was that and won, Roger Williams is not Roy Moore. So sadly, it now looks unlikely that the Democrats could take the district I live in, even in the best-case scenario where the Democrats win the popular vote in all districts by 17%+.

More concerningly, I wonder how many districts will have similar results to mine (Texas has the first primary this year), with Democrats nominating a candidate who will reliably toe the party line, but who doesn't make the sorts of concessions to rural and suburban voters they need to make in order to win it in the first place.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:48 pm

Crimson847 wrote:
Doodle Dee. Snickers wrote:If they win by 9 points, I think that'd be more than enough to take the House, though not by a landslide. They only need in the realm of 20-something seats, iirc.


If.

Generic ballot polls have a margin of error of about +/- 5 percentage points according to 538. So an advantage of 9 percent really means if the election were held today, we can be highly confident that Democrats would win the popular vote by a margin between 4 and 14 percent. Meanwhile, the GOP's various districting advantages mean that Democrats need to win the popular vote by at least 6-7 percent to be confident of winning the House, so a margin of 4-5 percent would probably mean the GOP holding on by the skin of its teeth.

In other words, 9 percent on the generic ballot makes the Democrats highly likely to win the House, but it means there are still some plausible scenarios where they fall short. That's the reason why the decline since December is significant--when the Democrats had a 12-point advantage, that meant high confidence of a result between 7 and 17 percent, and any result in that range would mean the Democrats take the House. So at that point folks like us could more or less take it easy, and now not so much.

I should also point out that turnout in Alabama and this race were about at the levels you'd expect from a typical midterm--if not on the Republican side, and that's why results have been so lopsided. I don't really know what more the GOP can do.


Well, I'd certainly suggest praying to every God ever conceived of that there isn't a recession before November, or the GOP's House caucus will be emptier than a NAMBLA daycare center.


Oh, I guess I misread your point, I thought you assumed a 9 point victory.

And yeah, if there's a recession before November, that'll probably be enough for the GOP to lose 130 seats in the House, eight seats in the Senate, and their will to live.

Even then, I don't know how much economy the GOP has to run on, in that sense. The economy's improved markedly if you're cashing out your 401k/IRA tomorrow, are trading on Wall Street, are filthy rich, or are getting a bonus at the end of the year (which is far less better than upping wages), but otherwise things are probably the same for you as they were pre-Trump. I read a lot of reporting from Pennsylvania about how the GOP realized that the tax plan wasn't really selling, and it's probably because it was a drop in the bucket for a lot of people (Certainly was for me).

It always frustrates me listening to reporters and journalists talk endlessly about how the GOP has a selling point that the economy is kicking ass when really, it's just the DOW that's kicking ass, which it was already before Trump. Sure, the economy suddenly looked a million times better to GOP voters when a Republican was in charge (Seriously, partisan opinions on the economy changed almost overnight), but the GOP already had those voters and I don't know that they've done enough on the economy to convince people who may be moderate or independent. I guess what I'm saying is I wonder if the Midwest is going to be quite the bastion Republicans thought it was.

cmsellers wrote:Whoever wins the runoff, it looks like the nominee will be a fairly orthodox liberal Democrat who doesn't compromise on any issues. And while Doug Jones was that and won, Roger Williams is not Roy Moore.


I don't know that I'd say Doug Jones was that. Sure, he was out of sync on abortion, but he's also a pretty Joe Manchin type in the way that he votes. I think it's more like...he's culturally liberal but quiet about it, and open to compromise.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Thu Apr 19, 2018 10:30 pm

In this edition of Nobody Learning their Fucking Lesson, Democrats are getting involved in the Republican Senate primary in West Viriginia. They're trying to prop up Don Blankenship, a Republican candidate and coal baron who's being compared to Roy Moore. See, Don Blankenship went to jail for a year after he ignored safety standards for his mines and an explosion killed 29 miners, then he bitched that he was a victim of Obama and Hillary and their evil police state*

A Democratic PAC is attacking the other two candidates in the primary as Blankenship gains ground. Democrats want to prop him up, see, because they think he's a weak general election candidate that would get eaten alive by Joe Manchin, and they could hang onto a seat in West Virginia. Perhaps they've forgotten that the extreme tribalism of our current times led to Roy Moore almost becoming the shame of the nation and led to Donald Trump actually becoming the shame of the nation.

* Side note: Between Trump, Moore, Blankenship, and the Alt-Right, is this what mainstream masculinity is now? Crying, pissing, and moaning that you're the victim and never taking a goddamn ounce of responsibility for a fucking thing you do? If that's what it is these days, count me far out.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Jun 11, 2018 9:09 am

The Blankenship thing ended in hilarity. Blankenship claimed during the campaign that Mitch McConnell is a cocaine trafficker, nicknaming him "Cocaine Mitch". When he proceeded to place a distant third in the primary, McConnell (or his comms people) tweeted this:




Now, in today's edition of Nobody Learning Their Fucking Lesson, after the Democratic margin on the generic ballot declined in mid-May there were a lot of triumphant articles in conservative media arguing that this means the voters have seen through Democrats' game and they're totally screwed. Afterward, the same thing happened that always happens when people make giant bales of hay out of small short-term polling variations: the polling average soon reverted back to the mean. And now it appears to be swinging in the Democrats' direction a bit.

FiveThirtyEight_Nate_Silver’s_FiveThirtyEight_uses_statistical_analysis_—_hard_numbers_—_to_tell_compelling_stories_about_politics,_sports,_science,_economics_and_culture._-_2018-06-11_00.15.57.png
FiveThirtyEight_Nate_Silver’s_FiveThirtyEight_uses_statistical_analysis_—_hard_numbers_—_to_tell_compelling_stories_about_politics,_sports,_science,_economics_and_culture._-_2018-06-11_00.15.57.png (11.14 KiB) Viewed 4653 times


This very same thing happened to authors from these same outlets in early February, during a previous Democratic polling slump that was predicted to foretell doom for Democrats' hopes of taking the House in November. Democrats did the same thing in their favor last December, and repeatedly during the 2016 election. But while some individuals may or may not have learned from all this, our political media as an institution doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Absentia » Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:35 am

George Will urges conservatives to vote Democrat this fall.

For the uninitiated, George Will has been the leading conservative editorialist in American newspapers for thirty-plus years. He wants to abolish the minimum wage. He has a poster of Ronald Reagan on the ceiling above his bed (I assume). The idea of him voting for a Democrat would have been conceivable only as a punchline as recently as 2015. But he hates Trump, and now he hates Congressional Republicans for licking Trump's boots instead of standing up to him:


The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.



I don't know how much weight Will's word carries with voters at this point. The fact that he's still writing for a newspaper might give you a clue. But I imagine it must sting a little for someone like Paul Ryan, who has cast himself as an intellectual conservative, to be castigated by the godfather of intellectual conservatism.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Cobra-D » Wed Jun 27, 2018 3:18 am

In surprise hit from (far)left field alexandria ocasio cortez unseated New York’s 14th District 14 year incumbent Joe Crowley , which is kinda amazing really.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby cmsellers » Wed Jun 27, 2018 5:28 am

I still wish the Democrats had been willing to kick out Bob Menendez in the New Jersey primaries.
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Re: US Midterms 2018: Can Team Blue take the Senate?

Postby Crimson847 » Sun Aug 05, 2018 2:21 am

Republicans are worried about the upcoming special election in Ohio.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... io/566759/

But that's just a cover for the real news in this article, or more accurately in the byline:

Trump_and_Pence_Are_Trying_to_Save_a_House_Seat_in_Ohio_-_The_Atlantic_-_2018-08-04_18.04.11.png
Trump_and_Pence_Are_Trying_to_Save_a_House_Seat_in_Ohio_-_The_Atlantic_-_2018-08-04_18.04.11.png (18.68 KiB) Viewed 4332 times


Yes, Dick Polman. Between this guy, Dick Pound, and Dick Armey, it's nice to see that even children saddled with porn star names can overcome those obstacles and become successful, influential figures in society.
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