The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Are you referring to the Electoral College Calculator, and if so, when you speak of congressional districts, do you mean the NE/ME ones on there?

If so, make sure the "Display Results by Congressional District on Map" is checked and then edit the percentages/party for each CD in the box right above it, then click "Update Map and EV Totals":



As far as editing the code that can be extracted for forum posting by clicking the "Show Map Link", there are three numbers in the code for each state: party, electoral votes and shade.

So, in the instance of AL, it will appear by default as "&AL=2;9;6" - 2 indicates Republican (1 is Dem, 3 is "green", 4 is "yellow", etc), 9 indicates it has 9 electoral votes and 6 indicates the 60% shade of the first number you chose.

So if I wanted to make AL have 27 electoral votes and vote for the "green candidate" with >50% of the vote, I'd change those numbers to "&AL=3;27;5", as shown below:

With the exception of the ME/NE CD splits, however, there's no way to my knowledge to make CDs show up on the Electoral College Calculator. You can always use a program like MSPaint, Photoshop, GIMP, etc to color in congressional districts from other maps yourself if that is an issue.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

58 out of 435 when about half the country wants him impeached? Yep sounds like a democracy to me

Not cool to try and impeach a President, regardless of how you feel about them.

As I said back during Obama, talk of any Presidential impeachment is ridiculous.

I don't understand why Democrats don't prepare impeachment. Or bills to create it.

You cannot impeach someone just because you disagree with their policies. This is why I roll my eyes at stupid conservatives who say "Impeach Obama!" No matter how much you disagree, no laws were broken. We have to stop this already.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Democrats made him a part of their Senate leadership (he's Chairman of Outreach) and he's a member of the Democratic caucus. Because the US political system is set up to only support two parties, the parties have to be Big Tent and allow numerous ideologies and affiliations. That's why open primaries and people registered as independent are not only tolerated but important, and with the numbers of independents rising, tribalism can't be afforded. Democrats in power don't care if he's independent because he's a vote in their favor and he's popular.

https://www.npr.org/2016/02/28/467961962/sick-of-political-parties-unaffiliated-voters-are-changing-politics

http://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-ballot-measure-colorado-presidential-primaries.html

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-independent-voters-20161029-story.html

If we excluded independents from the political process or from influencing the Parties (the same Parties who hope independents will vote for them in the general), we'd be excluding nearly half the country's voters: http://news.gallup.com/poll/166763/record-high-americans-identify-independents.aspx

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

As Richard Nixon used to famously say when talking to his key advisers regarding a wide range of Policy Issues from Vietnam, to the Civil Rights Movement transitioning to Northern States, Economic Policy, etc:   

"How Will it Play in Peoria"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_it_play_in_Peoria%3F

Although Richard Nixon was talking about Peoria, Illinois and not Peoria, Arizona, it is perhaps a fitting barometer of the 8th Congressional District of Arizona, where Peoria represents almost 25% of the Vote Share of the district, and essentially will provide a key test of Trump's ability to keep the Republican Party brand intact within a fast growing Exurban City within the Sun Belt, where in theory Trump's American Nativist and Hardline stance on immigration should be a winning proposition.....

Let's start with taking a look at the relative vote share by Community within AZ-08.



So as we see the vote share within the Congressional District is roughly as follows:

Peoria- 23%
Glendale- 17%
Surprise- 16.5%
Phoenix- 11%
Goodyear- 9%
UNINC-OTHER- 8%
Sun City- 7%
Sun City West- 4%
Others- 5 %

Why do I provide such significance to Peoria within CD-08, compared to other communities within the District, other than just the raw percentage of the vote coming from this "City"?

Basically any roadmap for Democratic victory within CD-08 will by necessity involve exceeding Democratic Maricopa County Sheriff candidate Paul Penzone's numbers in a district where Trump ally "Sheriff Joe Arpaio" won by 16,000 votes ( +5% Rep), while Trump won it by 70k votes (+ 20.7% Rep).

There are a huge number of Trump > Penzone cross-over voters that traditionally vote Republican, that any Democratic Candidate will need to win in this hardcore Rock-Ribbed 'Pub Suburban/Exurban Phoenix district.

Here's a chart of the '16 Sheriff Results by Place within CD-08.



Let's look at the '16 Presidential Results by Place within CD-08:



Now, to put this all within the larger context, we have not only the largest voting bank within the District, but additionally the place with almost the highest percentage of Trump > DEM Sheriff cross-over voters in 2016, other than some Upper-Income parts of Phoenix which I'll get to later !!!!

What else makes Peoria particularly significant when it comes to CD-08?

It generally mirrors the overall Demographics of the District.

AZ-CD08: Race & Ethnicity:



Peoria AZ: Race & Ethnicity:



Arizona CD-08: Household Income by Place:



Arizona CD-08: Education by Place:



Ok---- we have now established the Peoria is really perhaps the key place to watch in CD-08 when it comes to electoral margins.


Peoria Election Results 2012 PRES and 2016 GENERAL:



So what we see here is again how reliably Republican Peoria is, even in the 2016 Presidential Elections, with the local County elections for Sheriff being the only real case of a major deviation from recent voting history.

Now, although I haven't compiled the numbers for other Maricopa County downballot races, it does appear that in places like Peoria there was not only a major rejection of "Sheriff Joe" running under the Republican banner, but also to a significant extent local elected County offices from County Attorney, to County Recorder, to County School Superintendent even in solidly Republican precincts in Maricopa County.

It is potentially an early warning sign that Anglo Middle-Class Exurban voters are starting to reject their Maricopa County Republican Party Machine at a local level, and might well move on up the Food Chain in 2018.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but many of these voters went Democratic in essentially a nationalized election (County Sheriff) for the first time in their voting histories in a Metro Area where in theory the whole "Anti-Immigrant" shtick used be a shoe-in for any Republican Candidate running for office.

Glendale, Arizona:

In theory, Glendale should be the closest potential thing to a Democratic stronghold in the event of a massive 2018 Democratic Wave election.

It has a huge 17% of CD-08 votes, Trump "only" won by 12.5% of the Vote, and the Democratic Candidate for Sheriff captured a whopping 52% of the Vote against Arpaio.

The reality is that CD-08 was basically designed to take to most Democratic and Latino portions of Glendale and pack them into the district in the South, and essentially left the 2/3 of the City with the most traditionally Republican voters "Up North" as a safety insurance policy.

So although overall Glendale was only (45-47 Trump) in 2016, the 25% of the Population outside of CD-08 was (59-33 Clinton).

The 80% of Glendale remaining within the district incorporates a mix of Working-Class / Lower Middle-Class communities in the Southern precincts that tend to be heavily Anglo with a decent Latino Population, to rolling North to heavily Upper Middle-Class Anglo precincts in the far Northern part of the City.

Here is a Map of Glendale Arizona shaded by % of Latinos within the Population....



So for anyone not used to looking at these types of maps, basically what you are looking at with the darkest shading are heavily Latino precincts, not located within Arizona CD-08, and the part of Glendale you see North of the Giant dividing line, includes some precincts in "South Central" Glendale that might be around 25 % Latino.

Here is a Map shaded by Median Household Income for Glendale that shows that the heavily Upper-Income parts of the City reside in the Northern Part of the City.



Here is a Glendale precinct map that shows the overall Trump > Clinton margins by Precinct:



Note there are three precinct cut off the Map (Butler +9 HRC, Caron +4 DJT, Glencroft +6 HRC), but I think y'all get the picture that this should normally be considered solidly Republican Suburban Country under a normal "Generic Republican" Universe.

Now, we are looking a potential scenario where places like the Gerrymandered most 'Pub section of Glendale is looking like a potential Democratic stronghold within CD-08 in November '18, in a similar fashion like Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania went from being a Lean Republican suburb of Pittsburgh to an overwhelmingly Democratic stronghold within barely over 10 years....

Ok--- that might be a bit of a stretch, but still the South Pittsburgh 'Burbs of PA-18 mostly resisted the major Dem swing in Upper-Income Anglo 'Burbs in the '16 GE (+ 5% '12 >'16 Dem Pres Swing) and then came swinging hard with massive whacks off the baseball bat....

Anyways--- have tons of more data from the 142 precincts that make up AZ CD-08, but unlike PA CD-18, there are no Ancestral Democratic voting blocks that are available to come back to the fold to add to major swings in Suburban/Exurban Republican areas for a win.

Instead what we have is a new emerging Democratic Coalition in the most Republican Part of Metro Phoenix without any real historical Democratic Base (HRC won 12/142 Precincts in '16), with the overwhelming majority of the others won by Trump with Double Digits, and the only election in recent memory where a Democrat has won a huge chunk of real estate throughout the district was running as County Sheriff against a guy under multiple legal clouds, who cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County Hundreds of Millions of Dollars because of his shady law enforcement techniques.

My suspicion is that for a Democrat to win this seat it would take something like the following from the places within the district:

1.) Peoria (52-48 D)
2.) Glendale (59-41 D)
3.) Surprise (51-49 D)
3.) Phoenix (53-47 D)
4.) Goodyear (61-39 D)
5.) Sun City (44-56 R)
6.) Sun City West (41-59 R)
7.) Uninc Others (48-52 R)

To Be Continued.....

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The 2016 election almost doesn't deserve to be judged in the same category as any of the other elections, given the simultaneous Russian interference in the election and the utter failure of the press to hold Drumpf to any of the standards that all previous candidates had been held to. It would be like comparing the 1919 World Series to any other World Series.

Long post incoming!

You're right, darthpi. Our institutions absolutely failed us in this election. I hope I'm not a hypocrite for quoting this after the fact since I already posted that I think Drumpf ran the worst campaign. I stand by it though. Seriously, under no circumstances would a truly successful campaign have gone through three campaign managers, one of which was ousted for assault and the other ousted for being a criminal.

I do kind of want to elaborate on your post and come to the defense of Clinton, the apparent popular answer in this thread,  like Landslide Lyndon, Icespear, and a few others have.
You can complain about Clinton's allocation of resources, I get that, maybe that would have made a difference. You can complain about where she did or didn't campaign (though I doubt a visit or two to Wisconsin really would have mattered if Pennsylvania was so heavily invested in and voted against her). You can complain about her past choices to vote for the War in Iraq or how she handled her email sever. I get all that. But most of what affected her negatively, as related to actual campaigning, throughout the general election was outside of her control.

Clinton ran a conventional campaign in a time when conventional was not received well. Drumpf's wild card status and being the constant focus of most of the campaign's attention forced her to run based around him. Even in spite of that, she did have policies that she emphasized and campaigned on. It was hard to pay attention to them as Drumpf's latest outburst or rally made the rounds on the news, but they were there. When she wasn't forced to address Drumpf's controversies; she discussed health care, student loan reform, paid leave policies, equal pay for women, criminal justice, trade, green energy and the jobs it would bring, preserving beneficial Obama-era policies under her watch from a likely Republican Congress, and her ability to accomplish it all as an experienced public servant with the expertise to back it up. She had the backing of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others who helped her try to sell these issues. She aired ads that discussed these things while contrasting her life of public service to Drumpf's life of deceit and self-interest. Does anyone remember that tool on her site that displayed what she was accomplishing and when compared to what Drumpf was doing at the same time? That was a neat and effective idea. I wish more people paid attention to that than her damn emails.

In thinking about it, what I would really fault Clinton for were some of the assumptions, and I don't mean that based on a notion of her inevitability winning. Contrary to what most people thought would happen, Clinton and her campaign knew what was happening especially during the Comey letter aftermath. They never got complacent and I don't remember a spokesperson of her's on the news ever forgetting to emphasize that Drumpf could win and that it wasn't a guarantee that people wouldn't rationalize his despicable behavior or buy his demagogic, near-constant, compulsive lies and his false promises. No. What Clinton assumed was that the American people were more rational than they turned out to be. It's pretty common to hear undecided voters complain about how negative and divisive politics can be. This was no exception, but she ran with the "Stronger Together" slogan to hopefully appeal to people's better instincts rather than their darker ones like Drumpf did. Clearly people wanted politics to be negative and divisive. Oh but she said "basket of deplorables!" That only turned out to be an error since it was taken out of context. If you look at the entire quote it is actually a defense of the average Drumpf voter. She was asserting that just because Drumpf appeals to the alt-right and the David Dukes of the world that it didn't necessarily translate to representing the majority of people who support him. Sure, she ran some negative ads, but it's stupid not to point out his ignorance, numerous hypocrisies, and despotism. She categorized him as "temperamentally unfit and displayed why. Hillary Clinton is an overtly cautious politician and she ran her campaign in a similar fashion, for better and worse. I'm sure everything she did was well researched and evaluated, that's probably why she performed so well in all three debates. But when you are running with factors like an absolute enigma being your opponent, hostile news cycles, the electoral college, and a country of uninformed voters with short attention spans, it's hard to know what to do. That gets especially more difficult in the face of being so vitriolically hated by unreachable right-wing voters in addition to other unexpected circumstances like collapsing from pneumonia or facing an onslaught of Russian commissioned misinformation and manipulation. Honestly, Drumpf won due to luck and the environment which couldn't really be helped either. He also only barely won thanks to a technicality.

Clearly it did not have work out for her. And I certainly don't think it was the best campaign ever, but her losing doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bad campaign to me or that she didn't try her damnest. I didn't hear much criticism of these aspects of her campaign, that I laid out, during the general election. Everyone assumed that conventional was good and it isn't her fault that people chose to put their impulses before their actual interests and chose to focus on petty superficial things rather than constructive policies or ideas. I'm being harsh on the average American voter, I know, and it may not be a popular sentiment, but I don't think it's unreasonable to waive our want of "excitement" or "inspiration" when exposed to a recognizable threat like Donald Drumpf as President. Was running to preserve the Iran Deal, the ACA, net neutrality, or a rightful Supreme Court Justice nomination really such an "uninspiring" message? I always hear about how Clinton had a weak message but it was pretty clearly "don't fix what isn't broken." That doesn't need to be exciting, it's important! A campaign is a means to an end for a candidate to govern, not a form of entertainment. Drumpf is breaking what doesn't need to be fixed and worsening the things that do need to be fixed. All of the policies and accomplishments that I mentioned in the preceding few sentences have been threatened. Clinton has been right about a lot of what to expect from this administration. Drumpf is indeed temperamentally unfit, and our country (and the rest of the world too) is suffering for it. Even as there is a lot of blame to go around in general, that blame goes way beyond one person's campaign choices. At a certain point we all have to look at ourselves and at our fellow American and hope we all learned a few lessons for the better in 2020. It's the only thing we can do now.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You impecunious and hunchbacked Democrat teenage virgins do understand that;

1. Vermont has no party registration.  Sanders could not register as a Democrat even if he wanted to. 

2. Sanders would have qualified in 2016 with this statement alone he made in a Feb. 2016 town hall; "Of course I am a Democrat and running for the Democratic nomination."  Which is all the proposed rule asks of a candidate. 

3. It is effectively unenforceable, pointless, and only comes off as spiteful. 

And I have no clue why calling oneself a "Democrat" is some kind of badge of honor to you dweebs.  Donald Trump called himself a Democrat from 2001-2009.  Tribalism is a bad, you see. 

Anyway, register on Atlas After Dark, you losers.  Free hat. 

http://atlasafterdark.freeforums.net/

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The USPS has been a target of privatization for decades now; Bush's reforms were intended to lead to its eventual insolvency, thereby manipulating the public into disapproving of its performance and being more receptive to its privatization. Why would you want to privatize a public service with a long tradition and a track record of such success that to turn public opinion against it, they had to deliberately sabotage it? Clearly not because it is failing to achieve its goals.

Thousands of Americans work for the USPS, which serves as an important source of financial stability for historically marginalized workers and those in rural communities. It ensures that all Americans are able to remain connected to each other, to their government and community, and to engage in business without worrying about paying prices deliberately inflated to provide profits in an industry that was previously devoid of the profit motive. The purpose of dismantling such an institution is obvious; it disproportionately harms the least empowered section of workers, creates a new opportunity for profit-seeking, removes an important resource from rural and low income communities, and enables them to crush the public sector unionized workforce that makes up the USPS.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

OK?

The party switch still happened. Why did Vermont go from being the most Republican state in the union to being one of the most Democratic?

Vermont historically wasn’t a liberal state, on the contrary it was quite conservative. Vermont Republicans prior to the Great Depression were in lockstep with the conservative GOP establishment (exemplified by figures such as Lodge Sr. (Jr.’s grandfather), Aldrich (Rocky’s grandfather), Platt, etc.), which at that time dominated the Northeastern United States with their strong support amongst Yankee Protestants. Conversely the progressive Republicans such as Lafollette, Johnson, Norris and Borah were concentrated in the Midwestern and Western US where they found strong support amongst the poorer and more agrarian populations there, particularly German and Scandinavian Protestants. Voteview illustrates this quite well as their scatter plots of the early 20th century show a cline running between Progressives like Bob Lafollette and conservatives like Nelson Aldrich and Henry Cabot Lodge Sr.. The Republicans which are more aligned with Lafollette are almost always from Western states whilst the Republicans which are more aligned with Aldrich and Lodge are almost always from Eastern and inner midwestern states (including Vermonters).

Even during the New Deal era Vermont continued to send rather conservative Republicans to Washington such as Warren Austin and Ralph Flanders, the latter whom remained a senator until 1959. Even someone like Prouty was moderately conservative and he remained a senator until 1971. Additionally, the Vermont delegation at the 1968 RNC supported Nixon over Rockefeller (9 votes going to the former and 3 to the latter). Beyond the mid 20th century however, Vermont was clearly moderating as a result of generational turnover and left wing migration, and as a result it’s Republican Party pitched further to the left to stay in power. Hence why by the late 20th century Vermont Republicanism became exemplified by figures like Stafford and Jeffords who had very moderate voting records. Today, 48% of Vermont’s population was born outside of the state, which is the highest foreign born population in the Northeast aside from NH.

Both parties had solid bases of both liberals and conservatives but after the Civil Rights Movement, conservatives by and large left the Democratic Party and went to the Republican Party and liberals by and large left the Republican Party and joined the Democratic Party. That's a switch! 

This is muddying the waters. Whilst it’s true that the Republicans and Democrats contained factions which differed from each other ideologically. The cores of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have always been conservatism and liberalism respectively. You may find this idea absurd because you analyse history within a modern and America-centric framework but I’d advice you to look at the developments of Liberalism and Conservatism outside of the US in countries like Canada and the UK. Why Disraeli the Conservative promoted a philosophy of an active and paternalistic government whilst in the same time period Gladstone the Liberal advocated laizze faire capitalism and free trade? 19th century Liberals viewed centralised government as primarily an upholder of hierarchy and inequality and a tool for cracking down on individual liberty, this attitude began to be reassessed around the turn of the century as Liberals began to see a need for government intervention in order to fight against the perceived inequalities caused by unrestrained capitalism. Conversely, conservatives concerned that the excesses of capitalism would lead to an increase of social vices and class resentment/revolution saw a need for a more active government to regulate industry and assist the working classes and thus keep them attached to the dominant socio-political structure. This is why you see the scenario in 1904 which is inaccurately portrayed as some “flip” with Republican Teddy Roosevelt embracing economic reform whilst Democrat Alton Parker holding on to more classical liberal positions. In reality it’s just the aforementioned dynamics taking place. Liberalism and Conservatism aren’t a collection of policy positions, they’re outlooks which when applied to government take a variety of forms depending on the time period, political environment and the individual who holds them.

Of course you had left wingers in the Republican Party such as LaFollette and La Guardia, but they were clearly political outsiders. LaFollette (and other Western radicals) being a Republican because of his opposition to the Internationalism of the Democratic Party, and La Guardia being a Republican due to his opposition to Tammany corruption in NYC. You also had rather reactionary elements within the Democratic Party in the Deep South which remained Democrat not only due to the Civil War but because the wealthy Planter class, being supportive of free trade which would open up foreign markets to their agricultural exports, were opposed to Republican nationalist efforts.

As for the so called “Liberal Republicans” of the 5th party system, they’re the result of Republican organisations in Union heavy and  urban states like New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Jersey largely accepting the new deal and the Keynesian zeitgeist in order to remain competitive in states which shifted rapidly leftward during the depression. They were essentially the Charlie Bakers of their time except the political consensus was far more interventionist and the general Republican political disadvantage and their ability to win over Democratic voters gave them more credibility. They weren’t apart of some fully fledged century long liberal tradition in the GOP and have little relation to the Western Radicals of the early 20th century.

These elements and their decline didn’t revolve around the 1964 CRA either. It was far broader than that. The Western Radicals began declining in the GOP as it moved away from reformism in the 20s and as the Democrats made inroads into the west during the 30s (most of them were dead by the 60s anyway). Southern planters started voting Republican in the 50s not only because of the civil rights plank in 48 but because the Republicans under Eisenhower moving towards free trade was able to greatly strengthen his appeal in the anti-protectionist South. As for the Rockefeller Republicans, their decline was not only a result of the GOP moving towards neoliberalism, but the USA and the rest of the Anglosphere moving towards neoliberalism. States like New York which were considered out of reach for anyone to the right of Rockefeller sent Conservative party backed candidates to the senate in 1970 and 1980, Reagan was able to win with broad appeal in 1980 and expand upon his victory in 1984. As Republican electability increased across the nation whilst running on more conservative platforms, Rockefeller Republicans became defunct. The embrace of neoliberal economics was a global phenomenon and  would have happened regardless of the CRA’s passage.

Also, from 1860 until 1960, the South was SOLIDLY Democratic in presidential elections (notwithstanding a few elections) but then all of a sudden in 1964, the Deep South voted Republican for the FIRST TIME EVER in a presidential election. Wow, I wonder what happened in-between 1960-1964 to make that happen?

The South wasn’t solidly Democratic prior to 64. Eisenhower and Nixon made massive inroads there in their campaigns and Republicans downballot were also doing increasingly well (See John Tower, 1962 Alabama senate race, etc.). Yes it’s obvious Goldwater benefitted from backlash against the CRA, but to say that at this point the South was suddenly a Republican stronghold or that Southern Democrats were almost entirely conservative is inaccurate. It took decades to get the South to vote the way it does today on both the presidential level and downballot, especially in the outer South. A large part of that is because of demographic changes, generational turnover and other issues causing alienation. Hence why you have areas like NE MS, Northern AL, Central TN, much of AR, Southern OK, parts of TX, and the Appalachian states especially remaining supportive or competitive for even non southern democratic presidential candidates like Dukakis and Mondale. Heck, even Kerry in 2004 came within 10 points of AR. It’s also worth pointing out that at least around half  of these Southern Democratic senators and a higher proportion of Southern Democratic Reps were not conservative at all. Figures like Sparkman, Hill, Long and Fulbright were supporters of segregation and at the same time rather loyal to the National Democratic agenda, and remained popular in the Deep South.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

That Hotel California comparison made me re-write the songtext:


On a dark computer night
Cool elections on my screen
Warm colors on the map
Rising up through the polls

Up ahead in the districts
I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy, and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for election night

There OC stood in the doorway
I heard the mouse clicking
And I was thinking to myself:
"This could be heaven or this could be hell"

Then OC put up a take
And he showed me the way
There were voices in his head
I thought I heard them say

Welcome to the Forum
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face

Plenty of boards at the Forum
Any time of election year (any time of election year)
You can find it here

OC's mind is secular-twisted
He got the new avatar
He got a lot of pretty, pretty maps he calls freiwalls

How they discuss in the blog
Sweet summer sweat
Some discussion to remember
Some discussion to forget

So I called up the Captain:
"Please bring me my headline"
Virginia said: "We haven't had that spirit here since Obama '08"

And still those voters are calling from far away
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say

Welcome to the Forum
Such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face

They're living it up at the Forum
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Bring your hot takes

County maps on the ceiling
The red precincts on ice
And she said: "We are all just posters here of our own device"

And in the moderator's chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab the trolls with their steely knieves
But they just can't kill the socks

Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the logout box
To the place I was before

"Relax," said the KYWildman
"We are programmed to receive
You can log out any time you like
But you can never leave"

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I literally thought this was satire at first. NO WAY could this possibly be real. Then I saw Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny with a SCYTHE. Apparently scythes and TNT are still allowed, but hunting shotguns are verboten in CARTOONS that have had them for DECADES! Guns are core parts of Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam as characters — no reason to even bother having them around without the guns. It’s just cringeworthy.

Obviously the producers of this new show do not in any way speak for liberals broadly let alone the Democratic Party... but good lord they gave conservatives such an easy lay-up of a talking point for absolutely no reason at all. However minor, this is hands down one of the dumbest things I have ever seen happen in the name of “wokeness,” if not THE dumbest. It is downright surreal in its stupidity.

Not a single life will be saved or changed for the better because of this. Not a single kid who saw these old cartoons in the multiple generations they aired failed to understand that guns, or dynamite, or walking off cliffs, didn’t work in real life as they did in them. And even if they did, that would be on their parents rather than the cartoons. This seems indicative of a collective coddling and dumbing down of society that I simply cannot get on board with. And it’s all so, SO unnecessary.

The only effect I know this will have is I’ll make damn sure my kids only ever see the classics I and my parents grew up with. I don’t live under any delusions that hiding what a gun is from kids, or treating them as super scary objects that are to be feared so much they can’t even be portrayed in a cartoon, will lead to anything good. Guns, like sex and all controversial and difficult issues, should be openly talked about and explained to kids frankly in a way they can understand — and they’re smarter that people think. Cowering from the subject entirely does a disservice to them. It does nobody any good whatsoever, in fact.