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

[ON Progressive]

It’s fine if electing more women isn’t a priority for you, but attacking people for making it a priority for them is pretty counterproductive.

Also, Prag, we talked about this. You need to stop being triggered by me. It’s unhealthy to fixate on a random stranger’s political leanings so much.

Despite my earlier post, I want to be fair here, so I'm going to try to have a real discussion about this with you.  The reason you get folks so riled up is two-fold.  The first and most obvious problem is that you're waaaaaay too trigger-happy about accusing folks who disagree with you of simply being motivated by sexism.  Good people can and often do disagree, even when trying to advance the same general goals.  For example, if there was a female Democratic candidate who couldn't beat a misogynistic male Republican in the GE and a male Democrat who could beat said Republican, there are obvious reasons to support the male Democrat in the primary which have nothing to do with either Democratic candidates gender.  By the same token, someone might end up being more ideologically aligned by pure coincidence with a male candidate in a particular primary.  That doesn't mean the person is sexist, but you often act as though not blindly/unconditionally supporting a female candidate in every contested Democratic primary where one is running automatically makes someone a sexist.  With all due respect, that is ridiculous and essentially causes folks to perceive you as the boy who cried wolf and it can get pretty tedious given how frequently you do this. 

Secondly, you act as though nominating the maximum possible number of female candidates is the only priority this cycle.  I'll be blunt, it isn't nor should it be.  Electing more women is definitely very important, but it is not the only important thing.  Both America's democratic institutions and the rule of law itself facing serious external and internal threats, our President is an incompetent, authoritarian, corrupt, treasonous sex predator and general sociopath who is being enabled by a morally bankrupt Congress.  2018 and 2020 are not normal election cycles.  For the sake of the country, the first, second, and third priority in 2018 needs to be ensuring that Democrats gain at least one house of Congress and enough Governorships/state legislatures to undo many of the Republican party's gerrymanders. 

As a result, electability has become more important than usual.  No one really complained (including the Democratic establishment, btw) when Amy McGrath won in KY-6 because she was clearly the strongest candidate.  No one complained when Susan Wild or Mary Gay Scanlon defeated establishment backed male candidates in their primaries because both women will likely win in November.  The DCCC alone has actively recruited a number of female candidates this cycle including Juanita Perez Williams, Chrissy Houlahan, Mikie Sherrill, Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger, Jennifer Wexton, Kathy Manning, Nancy Soderberg, Lauren Baer, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Elissa Slotkin, Angie Craig, Lisa Brown, and Ann Kirkpatrick. 

However, there are some female candidates who are simply far less electable than one or more male candidates in the race.  For example, Sara Jacobs is probably the only Democratic candidate capable of blowing CA-49 in the GE and that random some dude running against Jeff Van Drew in NJ-2 is basically a joke candidate.  Conner Lamb was objectively a stronger candidate than Gina Cerilli in the special election earlier this year and given how close it was, Cerilli would've almost certainly lost.  Tim Walz and Tony Evers are simply the most electable candidates in their respective primary fields.  Prioritizing electability, especially in a cycle like 2018, does not make one a sexist and to say that it does makes a mockery of the widespread sexism that does exist today at nearly every level of our society. 

Additionally, there can also be ideological considerations at play.  For example, Mike Capuano has been a consistent champion of progressive causes in the House.  It's not sexist for liberals to support someone many of us consider to be an excellent Congressman over some random primary challenger, regardless of said challenger's gender. 

However, you seem to consistently take a militantly absolutist view in which the only options are 1) "you blindly support every female Democratic candidate running against a male Democratic opponent in a remotely competitive primary," 2) "you simply don't care about electing more women/combating institutional sexism," or 3) "you're a sexist."  With all due respect, this is such an obviously false dichotomy that it can sometimes come across as a male sexist's caricature of a feminist.  Such a nuance-free view of politics also ignores the fact that there can be perfectly legitimate reasons to support a candidate which have nothing to do with his/her gender. 

If you want to talk more about this, shoot me a PM and I'll get back to you when I can, if not, that's fine too.  I've kinda said all I have to say on why folks react to you the way they do.  Hopefully, you're not just trolling and can read this with an open mind.

[ON Progressive]

Yeah, the local party is treating him like persona non grata¹ (I get emails from the OCGOP asking for volunteers for Kim, Walters, and Harkey).

That’s because Dana Rohrabacher will cruise to victory in November. The suburban deplorables love him.

This isn't Temecula, and the suburban yuppies love Rouda. Rohrabacher is going down.

The NYT poll had them tied.

A long time incumbent with negative net favourables who is tied against a guy with 42% name recognition (and the challenger has high favourables in that 42%) when his party’s president is 14 points underwater in the district is an incumbent that’s very likely to lose in the election.

Yeah, head to head numbers do not tell the entire story. Mark Pryor was holding up relatively well in the head to head polls until late in the election, but astute observers were noting all along that he was stuck in the low 40s and almost all of the undecideds disapproved of Obama. Kind of like a certain Unbeatable Titan this year that everyone insists is in a pure toss up race.

Name recognition differences matter even more in House races though, where candidates are far lower profile and tend to be more at the mercy of the political environment. The road is littered with the corpses of Democrats in 2010 who "weren't polling that bad" then got BTFO by double digits because they were only polling in the high 30s/low 40s against an opponent with low name recognition.

Ah, so we are resorting to Dick Morris logic now. Gotcha.

Okay, I'll put some effort into this one...

First of all, there's a difference between saying "undecideds will likely break in a certain direction" vs. "undecideds will go 100% for the challenger no matter what." Plus, Obama's approval actually was at 50% on election day anyway.

Secondly, like I said, in general it's going to matter far more in lower profile House races than for higher profile races due to differences in name recognition and the fact that lower profile races are going to be more likely to be swept up in the political tide. In fact, that very article you linked says:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Low name recognition plagues low profile House challengers far more and for far longer than it is going to plague a presidential nominee, for obvious reasons.

If you transported back in time to 2010 (especially pre-October 2010) and you went solely by head to head margins and nothing else, there would've been zero reason to expect these races to have the results they did:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/la/louisiana_2nd_district_cao_vs_richmond-1301.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/fl/florida_25th_district_rivera_vs_garcia-1366.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/pa/pennsylvania_17th_district_argall_vs_holden-1308.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/mo/missouri_3rd_district_martin_vs_carnahan-1377.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ut/utah_2nd_district_philpot_vs_matheson-1465.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/pa/pennsylvania_4th_district_rothfus_vs_altmire-1298.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ny/new_york_25th_district_buerkle_vs_maffei-1378.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ia/iowa_1st_district_lange_vs_braley-1373.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ia/iowa_3rd_district_zaun_vs_boswell-1306.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/id/idaho_1st_district_labrador_vs_minnick-1266.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/mo/missouri_4th_district_hartzler_vs_skelton-1292.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ny/new_york_1st_district_altschuler_vs_bishop-1167.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ny/new_york_19th_district_hayworth_vs_hall-1275.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ny/new_york_24th_district_hanna_vs_arcuri-1280.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/pa/pennsylvania_7th_district_meehan_vs_lentz-1268.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/va/virginia_9th_district_griffith_vs_boucher-1390.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/fl/florida_22nd_district_west_vs_klein-1342.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ms/mississippi_1st_district_nunnelee_vs_childers-1270.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/nm/new_mexico_2nd_district_pearce_vs_teague-1257.html
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/ny/new_york_20th_district_gibson_vs_murphy-1297.html

Granted, there were some misses in the other direction as well, mostly in heavily Democratic districts that the polls had as closer than they ended up being. So another lesson is that House polls as a whole should be taken with a pillar of salt, and that fundamentals are very important to consider as well.

Side note, it's definitely noticable how stark Siena's pro-incumbent bias is in those New York polls.

[ON Progressive]

Beto isn't a completely terrible candidate. He would've been far better of a Senator than Cruz and has a consistent history of voting for and supporting several progressive causes. For example, he has advocated/voted for...

• Drug legalization
• Health benefits for same-sex and unmarried partners
• Staunchly defending immigrants' rights
• Defending abortion rights
• Opposing border miitarization in Congress
• Pressured Obama to close Guantanamo Bay
• Supported legislation to curtail NSA spying
• Opposed the war in Syria and arming the rebels
• Demanding Obama obtain Congressional approval for continuing his war against ISIS

All of those are good, noteworthy positions he has taken and deserves applause for them. He also deserves applause for the campaign he ran against Cruz, wherein he embraced a more progressive agenda, refused special interest money, and proved that a progressive agenda could win in Texas in a certain favorable environment (he lost by only a few points). Really, Beto should stick to politics in Texas and work on developing the Texas Democratic Party and running for office there in the future. Not every Democratic politician with talent and charisma needs to run for President. But, at the same time, I disagree with a Beto-for-President campaign because of his unfortunare policy positions, which are quite important.

• The AFL-CIO failed to endorse him against Cruz because he voted to give Obama the power to fast-track the TPP (which puts him further right than Trump and HRC on this issue)
• In 2015, he voted to weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, changed his mind when a delay of the Volcker Rule was included, then voted to weaken that rule 3 years later
• He voted to exempt mutual funds from stress-tests, which was supported by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association
• He only voted against 3 of the 15 deregulatory bills put forward by the Republican-controlled House Financial Services Committee to gut Dodd-Frank
• O'Rourke voted for a bill to make it easier for financial institutions to appeal regulators' decisions
• He voted to triple the size of financial institutions considered to be small bank holding companies, thereby qualifying for to hold higher levels of risky debt
• O'Rourke voted to create an unelected oversight board to restructure Puerto Rico's debt, which cuts pension benefits for Puerto Ricans, cut the island's minimum wage, and wants to cut the territory government's budget by 1/3rd
• He receives consistently high ratings from the National Association of Police Officers for some of his votes, such as when he approved a bill that would implement a mandatory minimum of 15 years imprisonment for teens who even attempt to send or receive sexts
• O'Rourke was 1 of 48 Democrats to vote to make it easier to execute someone for killing or trying to kill a police officer
• He also voted for a bill that'd basically make police into a protected class by turning assaulting a police officer akin to a hate crime
• Beto voted for FOSTA/SESTA, which was an anti-sex trafficking bill not supported by NAPO, but that has devestated sex workers
• After voting against $225mil for replenishing Israel's "iron dome" missile defense system, he received intense lobbying pressure, received a sponsored trip to Israel, and was viciously attacked in the media; since then, O'Rourke has become a reliable vote for the pro-Israel lobby
• Beto wrote to the UN opposing BDS, claiming the UN is "dangerously obsessed" with Israel and supported America's vote against condemning Israel's illegal settlement building

[ON Progressive]

"muh minimum wage increase!" is a silly argument that really misunderstands how two-party politics works in this country now

McCaskill lost because she was associated with the Democratic Party, for decades. Initiatives for minimum wage increases, medicaid expansion, and independent redistricting commissions can win because voting for those doesn't (directly) enact other disagreeable parts of the Democratic platform. There's no cross-pressure, e.g., gun restrictions, abortion, land use regulations and conservation, etc. that's being applied to voters with a singular ballot initiative.

That's not true when talking about a politician. There's zero doubt that McCaskill is in favor of a higher minimum wage, but there are a lot of other things she would endorse that many pro-wage increase workers wouldn't approve of. Hell, there are tons of positions that voters probably assume she holds because some Democrat in Massachusetts holds them; Republicans ran ads against multiple Democratic Congressional candidates saying they advocated for M4A when in fact they didn't, but the ads stuck because those candidates were running under the Democratic brand. The truth is when dictating which coalition a voter is willing to empower, they're increasingly voting on which identities they want to empower, which makes voting for a wage-hike candidate who supports abortion much more difficult than voting for a wage hike without a face/label/party affiliation attached.

Stop acting like voting for banking regulations would have earned her another 75K Hawley votes in the Bootheel or other garbage like that. Missouri isn't a state that's impossible for a Dem to win statewide in but it's damn hard and it gets harder every year, for reasons that are largely beyond a candidate's control and being repeated in countless other states. Voting for a labor-friendly ballot initiative takes less cross-pressure than supporting a labor-friendly candidate, and if you can't understand that you're going to misunderstand a lot of American politics.

[ON Progressive]

I've really had it up to here with the inconsistency of Republicans, and not just those who support and like Trump. If Obama had done anything like this, would a single conservative be saying "well, you can't really blame him, see, it's an issue of the nature of executive power..." ? Of course not, conservatives would be ripping him to shreds, calling for his impeachment, arrest, and more. For the party that calls (called?) itself the party of accountability, you all don't do a very good job of holding other Republicans accountable. The excuses, deflections, and rationalizing we hear every time Trump does/says something insane has gotten tiresome. If Trump had anything other than an (R) next to his name, many of you would not hesitate to say that he's uniquely unfit to be president, and has no business being anywhere near the White House. But because he's "one of your own," there's always some excuse to justify believing that "the Democrats are way worse" or "the liberals are the actual deranged ones", etc.

I don't disagree that Trump is a symptom of an underlying problem in society. We might disagree about what exactly he is a symptom of, but we can agree that he's not the root of all of our problems. Still though, would a doctor get away with not treating debilitating pain in a patient if the pain were a symptom? Of course not, that would be inexcusable. Yes, the doctor would need to address the underlying condition, but would absolutely need to treat the unbearable pain, even if it were a symptom. And we need to deal with Trump. Our problems won't all be resolved when he's out of office, naturally, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't deal with him and hold him accountable for his inexcusable actions.

I've stopped asking when conservatives are going to stop making excuses for Trump and hold him accountable, since I've become convinced that the answer is never, but I'd love to be convinced otherwise.

[ON Progressive]

Haha, you picked the wrong state to talk about my dude. I don't like it when people post bullsh*t about AZ, and quite frankly, almost everything you wrote is utter trash. Let me break it down for you!

1. Sinema broke 14% with Republicans.  Hillary got half that.

Exit polls indicated that Sinema did, in fact, have significantly more Republican support than Hillary Clinton. Why might that be? Well, for starters, many of these Republicans from places like Scottsdale, Surprise, and Glendale were already skeptical of Donald Trump. Many of these voters even broke for Gary Johnson in 2016. There was a significant third party vote (>4%) in almost every suburban precinct in Maricopa county.

Does this mean these voters won't support Donald Trump in 2016? Not necessarily, but it's an uphill battle. Remember, the President of the United States has publicly and repeatedly insulted a dead Republican Senator from Arizona. McCain's base was firmly in the suburbs of Phoenix. Donald Trump received 742,000 votes in Maricopa County; John McCain received 842,000.

Sinema was a moderate who wanted to send troops to the border to stop the caravan.

Sinema is definitely a moderate, but she wasn't the only Democrat to win statewide in Arizona. Kathy Hoffman won the race for Superintendent of Public Schools by a greater margin than Sinema won the Senate race. Democrats also won the Secretary of State race with Katie Hobbs. It would be foolish to assume that Sinema's victory was a one off success.

It's like saying Ducey's performance means that Trump will improve his margin of victory in the state.

Ducey, an incumbent Governor, enjoyed increasing approval ratings after the end of the teacher's strike. David Garcia, by contrast, was left for dead by the national Party as the fall went on. Only progressive groups came to his aid.

Also, dems only won the generic ballot here bc one district did not run a republican.

A state's vote in the House of Representatives isn't indicative of how that state will vote for other races. President Obama won Florida while Democrats lost the House popular vote by six points.

2. Trump's approval there is above 50% (only 41% strongly disapprove) per the 2018 exit poll, 9% above his 2016 exit poll and 1% above the final result.  Trump has clearly improved his image in the Romney wing of the party since the election.

And what did it gain for local Republicans? They lost the Senate race, they lost a Congressional district, they lost two statewide races...Are you suggesting that these voters have an unfavorable view of the local Party, but not of President Trump?

3. Arizona's party registration has become more red since the midterms, despite dems making gains prior to that.

It's held stable. Republicans are maintaining their current edge in registration; however, I'd like to point out that independents have been growing as a percentage of the electorate. They now make up 33% of the electorate. If Trump's numbers with independents decline, this will have a major impact on Arizona in 2020.

4. Even if Maricopa does flip blue, which is not a sure thing by the way, it does not mean the state will flip as a whole.  Counties such as Yuma trended R in the midterms.

Haha, what?? Yuma county, which is 59.7% Latino as of 2010, only reached 82.5% of its 2016 turnout. Mojave, by comparison, reached 89.4% of its 2016 turnout and Maricopa achieved 90.56%. And yet, the county still swung towards Sinema!

5. The latino vote probably wont increase in sizable numbers since 2016.  Trump has deported less illegals than Obama and the polls show he has stagnant if not increased support since the election.  Turnout of AZ Latinos in 2020 may even be lower percentage wise as the factor of hysteria over how Trump may impact their lives has receded.  

What the f**k?! Okay, this is a pretty dumb take. Turnout is set to jump significantly in 2020. Even if Latinos don't get any worse for the President, turnout among this group will likely increase as well. Most data suggests that, as turnout increases in the Sun Belt, the electorate becomes more favorable to the Democratic Party. Do you think Latino voters choose to vote based on their fear of deportation??

6. Non educated white voters are Trumps base and saw a big turnout drop-off in 2018.  I assure you they will be back in 2020, and some voted blue in the midterms esp. in the rust belt.  DO NOT underestimate them or you will be stunned again.

This is true, but again, Arizona has less whites without a college education as a percentage of its population compared to states in the Rust Belt. As turnout increases in this state, more Latinos and more young people are the ones who will come to the polls. Arizona also has a very generous vote by mail law, which already increases turnout among whites without a college education.

If you were talking about Pennsylvania, you'd have a point. But Trump will not benefit from higher turnout in Arizona.

That being said, there's nothing that guarantees Arizona will vote for Democrats in 2020. I am not saying the state is safely Democratic or whatever. However, the data suggests that Trump is in deep trouble here and that he will have to work hard to win the state in 2020. People like me will hopefully prove you wrong next year!