The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Do you realize that posts like these say nothing at all? You look unintelligent, and it makes discussions on this website appear worthless.

 If you think that the notion of Trump's winning Oregon is blasphemous, then offer an intelligent explanation, pointing at (for examples) demographics, trends, polls, and past performances in the state.

I could easily say, "OREGON. MIGHT. VOTE. FOR. TRUMP."; and that claim would be just as credible as your post, as you offer no explanation. Anyone can state something, but few people can argue for it.

The inherent political math makes it extremely difficult for a Republican to win statewide, at least with the types of candidates the party has been offering over the past few decades.

Basically in order to have a competitive statewide election a Republican candidate needs to accomplish three things:

1.) Keep down the margins from Liberal Democratic strongholds (Multnomah, Lane, and Benton counties).
2.) Perform extremely well in the Portland suburbs (Washington and Clackamas) and the Mid-Valley as well as flipping Marion County (Salem) and essentially tie or have a net plurality.
3.) Drive Democratic numbers to the floor in Southern and Eastern Oregon to maximize the vote margins and offset #1.

So for example Multnomah County alone provides a raw Democratic vote margin of 100k (2000) to 200k (2008 and 2016) votes and Lane County 15k (2000)-50k. (2008) for a low margin of 115k (2000) and a high of 250k (2008) that all need to be made up from regions #2 and #3.

What conditions would it take?

1.) Low turnout and large 3rd party vote from Sanders supporters in heavily Democratic areas of Multnomah, Lane, and Benton County where Nader got 6-7% in 2000 to keep down the margins to a more manageable 115k D margin.

2.) Running the table in what should be Trump's best regions of the state (Southern and Eastern Oregon) where his economic populist message should play significantly better than McCain '08 and Romney '12 and win most counties by roughly 70-30 margins and essentially garner an Obama > Trump swing and do closer to 2000 and 2004 Republican %. I do foresee some problems with his messaging in Deschutes and Jackson counties where there is frequently larger swings among higher-income socially-liberal and fiscally conservative type voters, although I can see Trump making some inroads into parts of Lane County that are more similar to Southern Oregon.

3.) Flipping the Portland suburbs and Mid-Valley region to make up the difference between Democratic margins in #1 and Republican margins in #2. This will be an extreme challenge. Although I can certainly see a Post-Obama Republican flip Clackamas and Marion counties, the reality is that in order to win statewide a Republican will need to perform extremely well in Washington County, which has been trending increasingly Democratic over the past few decades and is also becoming one of the more diverse counties in the state with a significant and growing population of Latino and Asian-American voters that find Trump's immigration rhetoric and language deeply disturbing. In addition, many of the higher income swing voters work in the Tech Industry (Intel) and for Nike, and are much less receptive to Trump's economic protectionist message.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

On my drive back home, I tried to develop this line of thought further. Conservatives, at least perhaps up until the rise of neoconservatism, held that not only was "our" (the "we" being whomever) culture sacred and in need of protection, but also that it was not transplantable. Culture arose organically, it was argued, and it was useless to attempt to bring aspects of it to others (the irony being that among those cultural institutions safeguarded by conservatives in the West were originally liberal triumphs). The liberal belief was that what some might call an aspect of culture, such as democracy, could, in fact, be instituted in new lands. After all, humans were adaptable, and the spirit or history of a people was not genetic! The central ironies of thought here were:
A. While conservatives considered our own culture vulnerable, other cultures were resilient.
B. While conservatives considered culture "natural", it must still nevertheless be upheld and reinforced by rule of law.
C. While liberals considered culture easily transferable, they did not consider that aspects of other cultures might undermine our own.

Of course, since the rise of right-wing liberalism and neoconservatism in the GOP, many original philosophical assumptions have been abandoned. We can transfer our beliefs to the Near East; cultural institutions are not something that need to be protected (I'm imagining Maggie Thatcher's public ambivalence about the rise of divorce in the UK); laborers in other countries are considered "equal" to workers in our own country to such that it matters not whether one is employed or the other; and so on. The GOP uses both "traditional" aspects of conservatism--"takin' er jobs!" "OMG China!"--along with newer stances--"We can bring democracy to every country!" "Your ability to be left alone is the most important governing priority!"--in its rhetoric to piece together a nominally right-wing coalition.

As for the "illiberal" left--ranging anywhere from paleo-liberals to modern day "SJW's"--[insert attempt at explanatory paragraph].

This was probably all said in a freshman-level political theory reader already and is in no way original. Just trying to piece this together.

[Kingpoleon]

On June 12, 2005, Justices Shirley Hufstedler and Sandra Day O’Connor announce their joint retirements from the Court.  To replace them Wellstone nominates Merrick Garland and Diane Pamela Wood, both of whom are confirmed without opposition.

[Anti-Bothsidesism]

He was sure friendly to Muslims when he voted to invade Iraq. Or voted for Gitmo. Or voted for the PATRIOT Act and other laws that target Muslim Americans.

I am not shedding any tears for this prick. He was a Bush II era Republican in every sense of the term, and when the cracks started to form in the dam, he didn't lift a finger to plug them. Which is why, when the dam broke, he was the first to be carried away in the tidal wave. One sob story that I'm sure his children (who grew up in the elite Washington/NoVA bubble) made up to show that he was above the rubes doesn't do any justice to him. Bob Bennett was part of the problem, and not the solution.

RIP HP.

wrong thread







Arsehole.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

These guys could not understand this struggle. They wanted immediate success and gratification, and they were not used to things not going their way. The issues and the lives of others had become irrelevant. All they wanted was for me to agree that they had been unjustly cheated, and that “Killary” and the DNC had rigged everything against them. I could not agree, so I had to walk away.

I like this paragraph, but I dunno whether or not there is any truth to it. Bernie's campaign kind of set the mood for this, imo. His campaign was centered around a system being rigged, and it's not really that surprising that a lot of people see his defeat as a result of cheating when he has spent the past year going on about rigged economies / campaign finance rules. I still think he could have vigorously spoke out against this foolishness the second it started, but he tacitly endorsed it by letting it go largely unaddressed, as it seemed to benefit him by riling up supporters. Maybe they worked harder if they thought it was being stolen? I'd hope they have a damn good reason though, as letting these kinds of lies and conspiracies proliferate is bad for our elections and party morale

I'm beginning to be more and more disappointed with the Sanders campaign. It was all supposed to be about addressing issues, not playing a bitter conspiracy talk. Bernie should definitively have took a stance. OK, I understand he wants to have best possible performance when it's over, which is a requirement to have some impact, but that actually may hurt the causes.

Yes, the candidate should make damn sure to disassociate herself or himself from certain actions of  supporters. Remember Geraldine Ferraro's comments on Obama in 2008? Hillary did immediately disassociate herself from this and Ferraro ceased to be a surrogate.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I most likely agree with Nathan as usual, but I wasn't here for that, and Atlasia always has ridiculously stupid tensions going on related to that silliness.

Yes, CC's views are completely absurd, but bullying a teenager over them with such extreme language is way too far. I hate a lot of what he stands for. Still, this forum could certainly use an injection of love pretty soon because I'm getting really sick of it this election season. Everything is good and evil - no trying to correct - just vicious character attacks. Every time I start coming on, I get more and more depressed reading this complete disregard for others - I hate to direct this to you because you are the least of my concerns, but seriously, let's start making a conscious effort to stop with the baseless name calling attacks. I'm not innocent either - I get swept up in the mob mentality, but how many times do you have to bump this thread?

[Joe Republic]

[IceSpear]

This isn't a left wing or right wing issue. It's about facts. And citing those clowns in the mainstream media Atlas loves to mock doesn't help your case here.




So...how did all those blue collar voters in western Pennsylvania vote? Even NE Pennsylvania wasn't all that strong for Reagan, he only won Lackawanna one time and by a pretty weak margin compared to his statewide and nationwide numbers. Meanwhile in 1984 Reagan broke 64% in Montgomery county. Most of those blue collar Democrats actually did not vote for Reagan.

The actual Reagan Democrats were mostly conservadems in the South, who are now consistent Republican voters today, or inner suburbanites who were fearing crime and racial tensions. There isn't really a comparable bloc of voters today.

But that's not even the biggest issue with the term. Because most Reagan Democrats whether they returned to the Democratic Party or not later are now either in retirement homes or dead. The youngest someone can be in 2016 and have voted for Reagan is 50, and that means you cast your first vote in 1984, not a lifelong Democrat who crossed over for Reagan. So most blue collar workers ANYWHERE didn't vote for Reagan, they simply weren't old enough. It's been 32 years since the guy was on a ballot anywhere.

It's time to move on and quit trying to define blocs of voters as defined by a 32-year old election, whether those definitions are accurate or not. People weren't still talking about "LBJ Republicans" during Reagan's time, and that was a more recent election than 1980 or 1984 is to today. This term was already effectively meaningless by Bill Clinton's second term, the fact that it's still in use today is sheer insanity.

[LLR]

If it has to be between Muslims who want to murder LGBT folk and LGBT folk then obviously I'd choose the latter. But let's look at it this way. There are plenty of American Muslims who don't go around beating their wives and constantly making racist, sexist and homophobic comments at work, and whose fathers don't claim to be Afghan presidents. There were plenty of signs from this guy besides just the fact that he was Muslim, like the fact that he was unde FBI investigation twice. A poll from last years said 42% of American Muslims think gay marriage should be legal. That was higher than evangelical Christians at 28%. How do you square that with Manteenism? There's no question that law enforcement should have been more vigilant. There are plenty of decent Muslims too though, heck there are even LGBT Muslims. We should be reaching out to them and raising their voices.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

This forum definitely has a problem with the bandwagon effect. Those wave threads are just like the spontaneous Opinion of ... polls in FC - Someone creates a silly poll or thread, and then like half a dozen or more users create a slightly different version of it for some reason. I wish people would stop doing that, because those bandwagon threads rarely ever turn out to be funny (imo). Quite the opposite, actually.

I don't recall ever seeing this happen on other forums, either. However, obviously anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal

[LLR]

More supportive of gun rights

Because we should clearly be carrying guns in gay clubs.

Agreed.

Frankly, I'd be interested to hear from those pushing for tighter gun controls on why that didn't work for the people in Paris. France has very tight gun controls, France does not make guns readily available to its citizenry, and yet 130 people are killed and 368 others are injured in a coordinated attack. So for the sake of argument, please explain how removing all guns from the hands of law-abiding American citizens would make any difference whatsoever on these terrorist incidents? Because from where I sit, Paris cannot be pointed to as an example of where we hope to be with regard to gun control or addressing terrorist threats.

The argument has never been that gun control will stop mass shootings- in fact thanks to the Balkans it's easier to get assault weapons from the Former Yugoslavia (but still very hard) The argument is that the French police were armed, and frankly the best people to stop these gun attacks are the police.

I really don't get why Americans have this idea that if everyone was armed it would prevent these massacres.

Even as a relatively healthy, fit 19 year even if I was armed I'd struggle to stop a mass shooting, especially if I was at a concert/gay club; in fact I'd be more likely to cock it up and shoot someone by accident/shoot myself etc.

It's like the claim that women are safer because of guns- sure it's stopped assaults/rapes and that's good. But a women is 22 times more likely to be used in domestic violence against women.

Like most of public policy it comes down to numbers/stats rather than your gut; we love the heroic image of a brave gun owner stopping the next Sandy Hook but frankly it's a load of bollocks

[Joe Republic]

The word is "blackmail": to force or coerce into a particular action, statement, etc.

I keep hearing that the supporters of "Hillary's ball and chain" and also the ball and chain himself are demanding things happen a certain way during the convention or else....

What's up with that?

Hillary is ahead of him in every way. What is so hard to understand about that? She has worked very hard for years to garner the support she has in the Democratic Party. What has Bernie done?

It's not nice to threaten blackmail when you lost the campaign.

Clinton has a majority of the Democratic Party (not necessarily delegates) behind her, according to polls, but that is not enough to win in itself. Sanders supporters like myself want to see a more progressive Democratic candidate and Party. Some will be content to see Clinton adopt a few positions of Sanders at the convention; others will not.

Sanders has caucused and voted with the Democratic Party on a majority of issues since he entered the House in 1991, and has supported the Democratic candidate in every election since, with the possible exception of 2000 (I am not sure about that one).

Look kid, your guy tried and he lost, you don't have a divine right to get what you want no matter what.  The election is Clinton vs. Trump, pick one side or the other.  You don't always get to have your personal perfect candidate to vote for.  If this wasn't your first election maybe you'd understand that that's not how politics works.  Your chance to get that candidate was in the primaries.  There's a whole cottage industry out there of fake candidates who exist only to take advantage of people like you for attention; Jill Stein is just one of them, and she doesn't even represent your views anyway because your views probably include the president being sane, mature, and capable of running the country.

I feel like these Bernie children don't even understand what the presidency is.  It's not some page of a history book where you stamp your manifesto.  It's an actual job that requires a massive toolbox of skills and experiences to perform competently.  By wasting your vote on Donald Trump or Jill Stein you're not just saying "oh I agree with some views of this person", you're saying "I think this person should sit in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next for years, speak for the entire country, navigate the most challenging and risky situations and make tremendously difficult and consequential decisions on my behalf."  You know perfectly well, deep down, that Hillary Clinton is the candidate you would feel most comfortable having in that position, no matter how much you try to immaturely delude yourself otherwise.

Your vote has tremendous consequences that reach across the entire planet.  Helping Donald Trump by voting for Jill Stein indicates a refusal to accept not just reality but also the consequences of your actions.  You can put your fingers in your ears and pretend it's some noble decision all you like but in your heart you know that if Trump were to win by one vote and people suffered as a result, you would regret it until the day you died.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Can't people just kill themselves anyway in messier ways with a handgun or a bottle of pills?  If so, how is allowing them to do it with the assistance of a doctor an affront to liberalism?  Wouldn't liberalism say that people have a right to do what they want with their own bodies?

Is your point that you are afraid the government will start pressuring terminal people to kill themselves, I guess?

I have ambivalent feelings about both, but I'm much more in favor of assisted suicide than abortion.  I think assisted suicide is pretty sad for anyone not in extreme pain, but I don't know that there is a big imperative here for the state to take away someone's right to self-determination, like there is with so many other issues.

Liberalism, to me, means a belief that society and government should be built around individuals. That doesn't mean that we should not respect social norms or established standards of morality. Perhaps a libertarian society could justify suicide (of any sort) by saying people have a right to do what they want to themselves, but I don't think that is a valid justification for legalizing assisted suicide under liberalism.

Suicide laws don't prevent people from killing themselves. Suicide laws exist partly to codify established social norms. When someone tells you that they want to end their life, social norms demand that you protect that person, not volunteer to clean up the mess. The government legalizing assisted suicide sets a precedent, both in law and morality, that the destruction of human life is okay under certain circumstances, and that the government has the right to define those conditions. I think that is a very dangerous precedent to set.

[Kingpoleon]

Ideology isn't a continuum.

I like Sanders for his stances on trade, inequality, and corporate influence in government.

Webb is pretty similar, and seemed to have a fairly coherent geopolitical vision as stated in the debates. Certainly seems a lot less likely to get us involved in a strategically useless war than Clinton.

Webb, when he did speak in the primaries, did point out that the Democratic party needs to pay a lot more attention to working class people in areas of the country a lot of Democrats never visit. I like that.

While I think the government should be very restrained in how it constrains individuals, by sensibility I'm somewhat of a social centrist.

Webb also left the party because he saw the degree of power that conceited urban liberals had in the party *cough * Clinton *cough *. Pretty sympathetic to that view.

This explains the crossover appeal Sanders has to both conservative Democrats and the base through an overlapping ideology thereof by Chickenhawk. While you may not agree with its fundamentals, you can at least agree that this could very well be an interesting post to analyze.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hillary is a proud Methodist.  

That's the best anti-Hillary argument I've heard yet! Who's proud to be a Methodist

Beats being a Catholic.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

On what possible grounds is this the correct thread for that post?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

On what possible grounds is this the correct thread for that post?

I was on mobile and couldn't find the Simple Truths Mine or whatever it's called now.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

On what possible grounds is this the correct thread for that post?

I was on mobile and couldn't find the Simple Truths Mine or whatever it's called now.

Then you really should've waited.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Personally, I don't think the Nazi/Swastika reference is in proper taste and it is insulting to boot. Trump is in no way on the same level of evil as the Nazis.... but I think the KKK stuff seems fitting, in the sense that Trump has built his campaign on scapegoating ethnic minorities. Obviously I don't think Trump is a white supremacist, but he seems to have no problem saying bigoted things or otherwise denigrating minorities when it benefits him. I don't think it's a coincidence that Stormfront / white supremacists are experiencing more attention this cycle, either.

The Klan should make Trump an honorary member, on account of all the scapegoating of brown people he is doing. He's like David Duke with the baggage

[Beet]

A solid majority of working class whites (outside of the South) are loyal Democrats, and most have more liberal views in general (but particularly on economic issues) than middle and upper class whites (which are the bulk of this forum's posters, so...).

This might be true if you set the income level low enough - it really depends on what constitutes "working class" - but even among the $50k and less crowd, whites are quite surprising in some states.

And holy crap: look at those "white working class" states that are supposedly voting said way because of racism. Look at West Virginia. Of course Atlas doesn't get it:

Romney was a terrible candidate for the white working class, whereas Trump may be a good one.

[Santander]

Of course he did. Modern far-right and right-populist parties and politicians (Drumpf included) are playing the exact same role communists did in the 1950s.

It is amazing that Russia has once again become the leading proponent of Reactionary politics, just like it was during the late 18th and 19th century, from inciting slavic sectarianism in foreign countries to promoting and propping up the far right across Europe.

Amazing that as we get further and further away from the breakup of the USSR, those 70 years look more and more like the super-imposed aberation they were, as opposed to the natural state of affairs it had seemingly come look like by the 1980's. Of course even doing that period the same type of stuff happened just done in the name of the people instead of the Tsar/Slavic unity or in this case Russian interest or whatever they would call it now. If that is not a stunning indictment of the failure of Communism, nothing is. Marxism was suppose to erase such nationalist inclinations.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The irony is, of course, is that the edgy anti-Semites who hate "globalists" are actually useful idiots for the true megarich elite. Because they prefer the murky world of quasi Nationalism, where they can hide behind shadows and squirrel their fortunes away from the public eye. The EU, for all its flaws, is an attempt to control the forces of globalisation and put it in control of the people and avoid the rush to the bottom. It didn't always work out the way (because - you guessed it "anti-globalists" eroded the ability of its democratic structures to regulate the nationalistic attributes of the Commission) but it is an effort. But no, even that is too much for the economically illiterate protectionists of this world who prefer to hide away in their safe space nation state pretending that they somehow have axhieved a victory over anybody. Sad!

[MT Treasurer]

Write-in unless Hillary picks Warren as her running-mate.

Dude, you seriously want to live with President Drumpf? You don't even have the excuse that your State won't be in play.

No, a write-in does not equal a vote for Trump.  I don't like Sanders that much and Hillary is even worse.  If the Democrats want my vote, they should've run someone worth voting for.  I don't need an excuse for casting a protest vote, it's a perfectly legitimate use of one's vote.  I have an open mind and want to be convinced that Hillary's not as bad I think (obviously Trump is way worse, but that's beside the point), but that hasn't happened yet.  So with all due respect, folks like BRTD, Bedstuy, and yourself can take your entitled, patronizing whining and stick it where the sun don't shine   The Democratic Party isn't entitled to my vote and neither is Hillary. 

Try making a case for Hillary.  It'd also be nice to see her supporters acknowledge and address the legitimate concerns about her (such as her hawkishness, her use of race-baiting, the e-mail scandal, etc) instead of just acting like she's the messiah.  FTR, I do think she has to deal with far more crap than many politicians due to the fact that she's a woman, but there are plenty of legitimate criticisms that her supporters seem unable or unwilling to address.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The only possible end to bipartisan politics in the UK is the end of FPTP. See : USA.

Or Canada. Oh, wait...

FPTP + Polarized political culture. Canada is not as polarized as the US or UK (regionalism is too strong).

Ok. A little lecture on political science is in order, methinks

1. Duverger's law (DL). An empirical regularity that says that in places with FPTP electoral systems there will be at most two major political forces, at least "in a long run". Originally formulated based on the experience of, primarily US and UK, though back at the time it seemed to describe Canada pretty well as well. In fact, even India did not do too badly for a long time (that is where the at most part was relevant). The things changed.

2. Canada. That strange country that has had pretty much a stable 4-party system for quite some time, being a superficial embarassment of the DL. One of those parties is regional, of course, but 3 other parties compete in multiple regions.

3. India. A most strange FPTP democracy where a government coalition, on occasion include some 20 parties, with another 20 in opposition.

4. Clarification of Duverger's Law: it only applies election by election, and each parliamentary constituency is a separate election for such purposes. The idea here is that there may only be two serious candidates in a particular district, but that the party pairings might vary district by district. There is a further exception postulated: if it is not clear who are the two front-runners, one might get a 3-way split, but this is an unstable set of affairs. So, either the third guy is very close to the second, or very far behind - with anything inbetween being unlikely.

5. At this point, the general belief is that US is a two-party country because in addition to the FPTP for congress it has also the winner-take-all executive presidency (not quite FPTP, but close enough). So, DL applies nationwide and district by district, creating a particularly strong Duvergerian force. The reason I call it a "belief" is that US is pretty much the only such country, which is both presidential and FPTP, so proper testing of this belief is impossible.

6. There is a somewhat mixed, but, generally favorable, evidence for the district-by-district DL elsewhere. So, perhaps, we should take it as a decent description of reality. But the nationwide version is, obviously, not true.

7. Of course, this implies that the past outcomes in the UK, Canada, etc. were more of an artifact of a fairly accidental division of nations into two political camps, both uniformly present nationwide: Conservatives and Liberals (or, later, Labour in the UK). Notably, this division is not coming from DL - it is a completely different story. At some point for, whatever reason, Canada lost that geographic uniformity, replacing it with multiple regional bipartidisms. Note, that there is no theory here why it was one way, and why it changed.

8. Britain for a long time seemed to retain the nationwide bipartidism, though in recent years it has been increasingly restricted to England. One could dismiss a recent surge of LibDems as a "short-term"anomaly". Perhaps.

9. The problem is that we still have no explanation for that geographic uniformity. It is not implied by DL. Claiming it is "polarized culture" just gives it a name, but does not explain it. Nor does it, really, allow for predictions.

10. There is nothing in the systemic structure of British politics that forces geographically uniform bipartidism - Scotland and Wales illustrate this pretty well.  Claiming it is there forever is not really based on any solid reasoning.

11. Furthermore, every bipartidism (local or national) is not enshrined in politics for enternity. If new issues arise, an old party may die, a new one may be born. Labs replacing Libs in the UK is a great example. There can be also temporary upheaval where such a replacement attempt is abortive: if it is not clear, who is the second and who is the third, DL logic suggests possible short-term multipartidism.

12. One thing that might promote such changes is an emergence of a new set of issues, or some other major shock to the political system. But, of course, England has not had any major shocks recently. And, in any case, it is simply polarized... Sorry, I have just stopped being fully serious.

[DC Al Fine]

Not a long post, but this very insightful graph deserves a repost.

Relevant:



The huge differences between the voters and the establishments of both parties is astounding.

The Republican establishment is staunchly pro-free trade. Most GOP congressmen are staunchly pro-TPP and pro-free trade. The GOP voters are significantly anti-free trade overall (as shown on the graph posted above).

On the flip side, the Democratic establishment tends to be anti-free trade. IIRC, most Democratic Party congressmen voted against TPP and are anti-free trade. A majority of Democratic voters are pro-free trade (as shown on the graph I posted above).

A majority of liberals aren't "enamored" by protectionism (as the graph above proves).

To answer the OP's question, a significant portion of liberals are enamored by protectionism due to anti-corporatism. Many liberals see free-trade as something that is destructive to the working-class of our country and only benefits large corporations.

I'm staunchly pro-free trade FTR.