2014 October Presidential elections, political winner

[Adam Griffin]

Even with one of the disasterous presidency of DemPGH and low(er than normal) approval ratings, still managed to gain a seat in the senate in the Mideast.

In fairness, Windjammer winning the Mideast Senate seat was largely due to pretty blatant strategic registration and the Federalist Party's bizarre failure to say a word about it while it was occurring

We actually did the math after the fact and were surprised to discover that windjammer would have won by 2 votes even without said actions. In fact, there were enough excess votes that we could have taken back the Pacific Senate seat, too. Of course, we had no idea that there would be such an excess and such a weak performance by the incumbent.

Labor.

Labor gave us the most disastrous presidency in Atlasian history - and, let me be clear, I blame the festering hand of the Politburo more than DemPGH for everything that's gone wrong over the past four months - and suffered almost no electoral consequences. (Yes, even the presidential election - Labor has a natural disadvantage in presidential elections, and was never a favorite to win in October.) If that's not proof of political genius, I have no idea what is.

Well that's just ridiculous. The Politburo operated the very same as it did during your presidency and Marokai's presidency. The previous administration simply was...prone to bad decisions. Personally, I advised against both the resignation of windjammer (which ultimately triggered a cataclysm of events and consequences no one could foresee), against making sirnick GM (expecting bad behavior), and a couple other specific ones I forget at the moment.

Though perhaps a different handling of things was needed; you know first-hand that I practically never asked any Senator to vote a given way on a piece of legislation, and in two year's time, I can count on less than one hand the number of times I ever lost my temper over a Senator's vote. I regret not exerting more control over the caucus during the energy debate, even though I did grow disappointed when I saw our caucus fracturing on it after those who had offered no discussion whatsoever suddenly decided to chime in at the end. The difference between having effectively four members of your own party in the Senate during a term (which was what you really had) versus five members (which is what DemPGH had) makes a world of difference in how one acts as President; you were in less of a position to make bad decisions not because you are incapable of them, but because you didn't have the ability at the time to make them. Between Napoleon, Polnut and the right, you were quite constrained. I wonder if things would have been different had you not called Kalwejt "fycking useless" in IRC (something that for some reason, he still seems to hate me for)?

[Adam Griffin]

At any rate, of course we won this sh!t. The whole game's been trying to put us in the grave since forever ago, and they really thought they had us this time.

This wasn't our worst or even second-worst performance of the past year; it was our second-best. The Labor ticket (in the two-way model) got 28% in October 2013 and 39% in February 2014. We got 43% in the same calculation in this election running against someone who basically has Duke's chops when it comes to cobbling voters together who have nothing in common with each other; so much for a dead party.

One on side, you have the Federalists, which I'll just say has become a disorganized blob of voters with two different mindsets at this point (I think others already covered the basics of what has happened quite well). They'll always pay more for over-reaching than the left will in this game, even if there's more of a prolonged stink made about the things Labor has done in the recent past. Truly sad.

On the other end, you have TPP, which is increasingly demonstrating a propensity to act just like the Progressive Union did (and as it itself did before dissolving last year): no ideological core and a lack of being able to elect its members (save for when they are under the umbrella of other parties). We saw a majority of their members in the NE try to oust Labor's most moderate Senator by voting for an inactive Trotskyist, and a clear majority of their bloc vote for someone who they know good and well if given the chance, will be a rabid right-winger while in office, and all because it just wanted to wipe us from the map. Thankfully, he won't get that chance. Still...ridiculous.

Of course it'll always be possible to cobble together a majority in-game who oppose Labor for the sake of opposing Labor, but as long as any combination of anti-Labor forces wish to make that their top priority, they themselves will find their own power dramatically weakened (and Labor of course will always find ways to sneak around that, because we're obviously still here, aren't we?).

[Adam Griffin]

2. Accepting Windjammer's resignation was probably the single best decision of DemPGH's presidency. (Those of us who were closest to the situation understand why.) Tyrion's first confirmation was never destined to fail, and would have passed easily had the White House been willing to work with a single non-Labor Senator.

And I know most disagreed with me. It certainly wasn't the best decision from the perspective of what I was looking out for, and yes, I feel vindicated, if you will, in seeing what happened after that. The lack of a VP for a month, the ascension of Tyrion to the Presidency and a good part of the chaos wasn't caused by - but certainly wouldn't have happened - had this not occurred. I also see the windjammer debacle in being our "stumbling" moment, upon where we showed weakness and the subsequent kicking thence began. There was a clear downhill trend that began precisely at that moment.

I urged DemPGH to build alliances outside of the Labor Party throughout his presidency, even before leaving the party myself. You simply cannot be a successful president without those relationships, even if you have a slim majority in the Senate. Unfortunately, this never happened, and, yes, I blame the Politburo for creating a paranoid and intolerant atmosphere in which collaboration with those outside of the party was impossible.

DemPGH was already up against the firing squad by the time any of us began to talk publicly about what was being talked about behind the scenes. Again, I have quite the cache of communiques from August onward that tell me what I need to know about the subject; only long after the energy bill, the windjammer fiasco and the denial of our VP did I and other ever foray into that territory. By then, DemPGH's reputation was already being dragged through the mud: he knows that, I know that, and anyone being honest about the timeline of the situation will remember it.

Could he have been more encompassing when it came to who he worked with? Sure, but the Politburo didn't have anything to do with that, and I've heard more than one person talk about this issue and the fact that it was an issue from the start. The stories simply don't fit together chronologically-speaking, and you should know as well as anyone that I don't tell Presidents what to do anymore than I tell Senators what to do; I do sometimes offer my advice, and they can choose to take it or ignore it. My job always was to get you guys there and, barring some massive faux-pas, let you run with it.

3. Do you really want to revisit the energy nationalization bill? How you can look back at that debacle and decide that your greatest failure was not controlling Labor's Senators is beyond my understanding.

I think you misunderstand what I mean by saying I wish I would have been more involved in that situation.

4. I have said far, far worse things than that on the IRC, but I'm not sure what that that has to do with anything.

Mainly just to ground us all in some reality. The longer we get away from the old days, the more I've noticed you view certain aspects of the game through certain types of tinted glasses (whether they be rose or fecal). Your tenure as President certainly resulted in the alienation of several individuals when it came to our party's relationships with them (Kal's an example, who was mere hours away from becoming a Labor Senator before he found out about that), just as you describe DemPGH alienating people during his tenure.

Though to my knowledge, DemPGH's failures in that regard were less severe in terms of the personal animosity he generated. The very same mechanisms (mainly as they relate to the Politburo) that you deride today were the ones you in part relied upon as President and embraced when they were beneficial to you. I bring it up because I think that the Nix I knew in 2013 would have made some pretty damn egregious mistakes and overreaches had he had a Senate capable of letting him do that, based on the private demeanor I knew; he didn't, and DemPGH did, and that's part of the point. Don't hate on the machine of today when it was your machine of yesterday, especially when nothing at all has really changed about it.

[Adam Griffin]

lol

Like I said before, if it's made to be about us, then we always win, in one way or another.

FTR, I never made the first quoted post, that was by Nix

That's weird. I must have copied and pasted a quote in my original reply to you and it somehow got carried over.