Election 2017 Thread

[No Excuses]

The most encouraging thing if you are a Democrat from last nights result is that you are winning a massive chunk of the <44 vote even in Alabama. 

 

The GOP is going to run into the millennial and Gen X buzz saw throughout the country moving forward. 

 

They know this too. Hence the only thing they care about is satisfying their donors before they get booted out of office.

[redskinss]

Hopefully  after all these messages being sent to trump that he'll go the window of the white house on Christmas eve, toss a coin out into the street for a little boy and tell him to go buy the fattest goose he's ever seen. 

[Burgold]

Spoiler

The best and worst thing that could happen. A true tidal wave sweeps over the land in 2018. Trump and Pence are both impeached for very real and worthy misdeeds... and suddenly, the US President becomes Nancy Pelosi.

 

[Going Commando]

32 minutes ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

Dems had better stop taking the Southern black vote for granted. Their high turn out swung this election for Jones. They’re the key going forward.

 

I don't think the issue is that they're taken for granted.  These are the communities that Democratic candidates turn to when it's campaign time because they know they're the most loyal base of support they have.  The issue is that Black voters are on an island in the South.  There is no real organized White vote for the Left in a state like Alabama.

 

This was an extraordinarily high turnout election for a single candidate special election in December.  I haven't seen numbers, but I wouldn't be shocked if Black voter turnout was over 60%.  Democrats are maxing out this demographic, and yet it is only 30% of the total electorate.

 

Black Democrats need help.  The national party needs to be pumping money into their organizations to help them build the infrastructure to grow the party in these states.  We've got to help them activate and organize left-leaning Whites and bring them into their tent.  Black Democrats have proven they can turn out a monolithic Black vote that is 30% of the electorate in Alabama, then if they can chisel off a third of that White vote, they can win the state.  I think they can do it.  And I think the demos they can bring in are White women and college educated Whites.

[Mr. Sinister]

13 minutes ago, redskinss said:

Hopefully  after all these messages being sent to trump that he'll go the window of the white house on Christmas eve, toss a coin out into the street for a little boy and tell him to go buy the fattest goose he's ever seen. 

 

Or he could, you know... Dive head first

[Zguy28]

27 minutes ago, tshile said:

But are there?

 

Remember who Moore is.

 

Add in the context that I just posted - that R's didn't vote against him, they just stayed home. The ones that bothered to vote still couldn't vote against him.

 

I'm overly cynical. So maybe I'm just blind here. I'm not exactly finding decency in this.

 

Had any measurable portion of R's shown up and voted against him I think I'd agree. But they didn't. Yet again we see a race that is less about issues and moral standards and an educated electorate, but instead simply about which party energized its base.

 

The one's who didn't vote were likely those who were unable to choose between a candidate that dated/touched 14 year olds and lied about it and a candidate who supports the right to kill unborn babies. So they stayed home. If the GOP had run just about any other candidate, they would've won a landslide.

[tshile]

22 minutes ago, Burgold said:

That's why I call it an American victory. Most likely, any other Republican would have won. Moore depressed the vote which was probably as close as Alabamanians could get to voting for a Democrat. 

 

The Democrats didn't win. Moore lost. I'm not sure if the Republicans won or lost.

I know my cynicism is bad, but another way of putting it...

 

it took being outed as a kid toucher to get democrats to show up and vote.

 

it will forever bother me how much the state of politics in this country is determined simply by who decides to show up or not show up.

9 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

There is no real organized White vote for the Left in a state like Alabama.

That was a big point on npr this morning.

 

The infrastructure for the democrats party in states like Alabama is non-existent.

 

[Sticksboi05]

The number of white women who voted for a man who said the Amendment allowing them to vote should never have been passed is astonishing. And also, not surprising in the least.

[tshile]

9 minutes ago, Zguy28 said:

The one's who didn't vote were likely those who were unable to choose between a candidate that dated/touched 14 year olds and was a raging homophobe, xenophobe, and racist and lied about it and a candidate who supports the right to kill unborn babies. So they stayed home. If the GOP had run just about any other candidate, they would've won a landslide.

 

i added a part you missed.

 

and i'm not a 'everyone who's a republican is a racist' type person either. it just so happens in this case this dude was all sorts of terrible.

 

alabama republicans want to stake their voting morality strictly on abortion, a decided subject in terms of law, and ignore everything else...

 

sorry, that doesn't qualify for a pass to me.

 

[Larry]

1 hour ago, Burgold said:

The deck was stacked against a Republican in Alabama? Could anyone possibly buy that load of Trump.

 

Yes.  

 

The same people who bought a load of Moore.  

 

[Burgold]

Just now, Larry said:

 

Yes.  

 

The same people who bought a load of Moore.  

 

Heck, even Oliver Twist finally said, "Please sir, I've had enough of Moore."

[Larry]

1 hour ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

Dems had better stop taking the Southern black vote for granted. Their high turn out swung this election for Jones. They’re the key going forward.

 

Agreed.  I'd be willing to bet that one factor, here, was high black turnout in an off-year election.  

 

(I'm willing to bet that the GOP is planning on doing something about it, too.)  

 

[Bozo the kKklown]

1 hour ago, Springfield said:

Man, that’s sad.  However, the black vote could totally retake the south.

Why do you think the GOP has been suppressing the black vote the last 20+ years?

 

The "liberal, left wing, mainstream media" does not talk about what they are doing to the black vote in this country enough.

[Going Commando]

8 hours ago, thebluefood said:

And they get nothing in return. Black women are proof that there is grace in the world.

 

They represent the best in the party.  And they have become the moral compass for the country.  It's not just about their vote either, they're the ones knocking on doors for Democrats and doing the hard work of winning elections.

 

Black voters turn out.  They have for the past several elections.  And this despite broad and determined efforts to disenfranchise them in places with Republican governments.  Democrats need to understand how Black voters became model Democrats--how they were organized and activated.  And then we need to use those lessons to organize and activate the liberal White, Hispanic, and Asian vote.

[bearrock]

59 minutes ago, TheGreatBuzz said:

I think it is more expecting the Left to act like the adults in the room.  Now I was a Republican at one point (in the last year or so) but actually left because I was so tired of them acting like children among other things.  The Left doing the same thing that caused me to abandon the Right isn't exactly giving me a good reason to join their team.  I know acting like an adult is a lot to ask of our politicians but can they at least try?

 

We so badly need a moderate third party.  Something to prevent either party from swinging too wildly to one extreme.  Kasich/Hickenlooper should totally team up for that independent bid.

[Bozo the kKklown]

27 minutes ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

And I think the demos they can bring in are White women and college educated Whites.

And they would be foolish to think that because those people overwhelmingly vote Republican, and last night, voted for an accused pedophile.

 

A year after voting for someone for president who boasted about sexually assaulting women.

 

I am not saying Dems shouldnt campaign for white women, but that the Dems should mobilize and enact policy for the electorate that is always there for them.

[nonniey]

21 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

.....

 

..... republicans want to stake their voting morality strictly on abortion, a decided subject in terms of law, and ignore everything else...

 

......

 

Well, Republicans do have a history of that, after all that is how their party originated.

[DogofWar1]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

 

That is all over the MSM and ive seen it a dozen times, including last night in this thread

 

51 minutes ago, tshile said:

That's all wtop and npr was discussing on my 20 minutes listening this morning.

 

Also, college educated voter exit polling.

Hmm, my bad, I follow a pretty diverse group of news people on twitter and had seen very little chatter about it, and they usually have their fingers on the pulse of MSM stuff pretty decently.  Guess I missed it or follow the wrong people.

 

Though I will mention I'm not sure NPR or WTOP count (I certainly didn't count them while making the comment, lol).  They usually do their due diligence but also unfortunately have smaller reach, which differentiates them from the Foxs, MSNBCs, and CNNs.

[tshile]

26 minutes ago, nonniey said:

Well, Republicans do have a history of that, after all that is how their party originated.

I'm not saying they shouldn't care about abortion.

 

I'm saying the subject is decided as a matter of law. Making it your single-issue voting rational is ridiculous. 

 

And, honestly, it seems to be used as a cover for more nefarious things - like racism, xenophobia, etc.

 

They are not the only group of single-issue voters that need to grow up and reconsider what it means to be a responsible voter, but they certainly one of them. And sitting this election out, or worse actually voting for moore, and using abortion as your cover is pathetic.

 

(that's just my opinion though...)

[Dan T.]

52 minutes ago, Mr. Sinister said:

 

Or he could, you know... Dive head first

 

Only if it's from the penthouse of Trump Tower.

[tshile]

5 minutes ago, DogofWar1 said:

Hmm, my bad, I follow a pretty diverse group of news people on twitter and had seen very little chatter about it, and they usually have their fingers on the pulse of MSM stuff pretty decently.  Guess I missed it or follow the wrong people.

 

Though I will mention I'm not sure NPR or WTOP count (I certainly didn't count them while making the comment, lol).  They usually do their due diligence but also unfortunately have smaller reach, which differentiates them from the Foxs, MSNBCs, and CNNs.

yeah, i wasn't trying to call you out i was just pointing it out.

 

i get more sophisticated opinions, better analysis in regards to history, and better citations and source material from a football forum dedicated to the Redskins than I do from the main stream media.

 

it's pathetic and sad.

 

though newspapers are much better than the TV MSM.  i don't know how much news papers, or internet news sites like the atlantic, really count for MSM though because it seems like a larger-than-should-be portion of people who reference them appear to only read headlines and 1 (maybe 2) paragraphs in...

 

it turns out... that's rarely enough to acquire real information on a topic...

 

 

[NoCalMike]

My initial thought on this was "big deal" a Democrat beat one of the worst candidates in my lifetime by a point & a half. However, I thought about it more and, regardless of how it happened, much of which has already been analyzed to death, the Doug Jones victory could be a symbolic sign of hope for Democratic voters in the South.  Maybe it gives motivation for higher turnout in other local races where the feeling of inevitability usually kept a percentage of Democratic voters home.  The "they did it, why can't we?" feeling might invigorate other voting blocks in the region.  Too soon to tell for sure though. 

[Going Commando]

1 hour ago, Sticksboi05 said:

The number of white women who voted for a man who said the Amendment allowing them to vote should never have been passed is astonishing. And also, not surprising in the least.

 

White women aren't a monolith.  The most clear fault lines in the demo are level of education and whether they are married or unmarried.  Educated and unmarried White women are Democrats.  Married White women without a college education vote Republican.  And the reason is because those women take on the political views of their husbands. 

 

First off, education empowers you to think critically and formulate principles which aren't reinforced solely by dogma and social taboo.  But education is also a passport into the public sphere.  White women with college degrees are often in professions like teaching and nursing.  They experience the utter bull**** of Republican anti-government free market worshiping philosophy everyday in their work.  They see the ruinous effect of neglecting funding for education and healthcare.  Married white women who don't work or don't work in Blue fields like teaching/nursing are, frankly, more sheltered from the world outside their homes and families.  To them family and loyalty are what matter.  So they take on the views of their Republican husbands.  The security of their home is often dependent on this.  And voting Republican is ultimately made easy for them because they live in conservative bubbles where they do not hear liberal voices. 

 

Actually, come to think of it, I think this is true of married white women who vote Democrat too.  My wife has a college degree and she has grown to become far more liberal since she's been with me.  I think White women are socialized to seek consensus and family harmony in a way that might be unique within the electorate.

 

A member of my family is the quintessential example of the married White woman Republican voter with no college degree.  The night before the 2016 election, she called my wife and asked her what she should do.  Her husband was pretty vocal in support for Trump, their entire family is pretty conservative, and they live in a VERY conservative part of the country.  Yet she must have had some issues with Trump to reach out to my wife like that.  Anyway, my wife went over some of the bad **** about Trump and why he'd be a disaster.  She literally did not know about or understand his issues, I'm dead serious when I say they never hear liberal voices.  But I'm pretty sure her husband got into her ear next, and when the moment of truth came she still voted for Trump.  ****ing pissed me off so much.  Still makes me angry when I think about it a year later but I'm not mad at her anymore.  I realize now it's an issue of security for her and her family.

 

White husbands are VERY controlling and lead households on political issues.  I'm not really sure what you can do about this except to keep educating and empowering White women and bring educated White men into the Democratic fold.  Uneducated White men are ****ing lost.* 

 

*EDIT: unless they're union workers.

[Zguy28]

Now that Democrats have this victory, I fully hope and expect that they will not forget about these women who were molested, but instead will pursue their accusations and see justice done.

[Dan T.]

5 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

My initial thought on this was "big deal" a Democrat beat one of the worst candidates in my lifetime by a point & a half. However, I thought about it more and, regardless of how it happened, much of which has already been analyzed to death, the Doug Jones victory could be a symbolic sign of hope for Democratic voters in the South.  Maybe it gives motivation for higher turnout in other local races where the feeling of inevitability usually kept a percentage of Democratic voters home.  The "they did it, why can't we?" feeling might invigorate other voting blocks in the region.  Too soon to tell for sure though. 

 

I want to believe it's a victory for common decency and a call to pump the brakes on the divisive rhetoric that dominates political discourse today.  That state of affairs is not entirely Donald Trump's fault, but he's been spraying gasoline on that open fire for several years now.  His surrogate Steve Bannon was in Alabama insulting Republicans and Democrats alike while pimping for a bigoted child molester.

 

The moment mild mannered Doug Jones won in Alabama he declared he will serve all the people of Alabama.  Donald Trump continues to divide.  He has yet to make any attempt to bring people together.  Instead he feeds his base at the expense of any unifying theme.