President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Moore was always going to win.

In places that aren't Alabama, the GOP will have to run on a 2018 platform of two sexual predators (Trump, Moore) and an awful tax bill that hurts the poor and middle class. Oh, and cutting social security and medicare. And an administration with two guilty pleas and two indictments in the Russia probe (so far).

If the Dems can't get a wave election big enough to overcome gerrymandering, they never will.

 

The major difference is those members of Congress are resigning left and right, while Moore is protected by a force field and will join the Senate with hardly a ripple..

 

Recommended reading for all, in and out of the business.

Perspective | How do you use an anonymous source? The mysteries of journalism everyone should know.

 

Meanwhile, this could be interesting too.

 

I hope the security is very tight.

 

Why should I care what somebody named Barry something tweets? And yet no reaction to Lindsey Graham calling for investigations on topics we all know are bullshit?

 

They'll get a wave election. Big enough to overcome gerrymandering? My guess is yes, but it'll be close.

But that won't be the end of the story. It's a long process.

In 2016 in Virginia, 49.17% of voters went for a Democratic candidate for their U.S. Representative, slightly more than the 48.74% that went for Republican candidates.

This slight advantage led to 7 Republican seats and 4 Democratic seats, because of severe and intentional gerrymandering. The same map will be in place for 2018, more than likely.

*But* Virginia is also the earliest peak at the Democratic wave building, a major statewide set of elections in a fairly purple state. Democrats won the governorship easily, and have either flipped or reduced a large Republican advantage in the state legislature to a razor-thin margin, depending on how some recounts go.

The 2020 electoral map will be drawn by that balanced state legislature with veto rights for the Democratic governor. That should knock off a +2 Republican baked-in gerrymandered edge in the House. It depends on how you want to calculate it, but just going by the relative R/D votes in House races in 2016 versus the national total, Republicans baked in 21 extra seats (that's a quick and dirty methodology, if anyone wants to quibble over that number, fine).

If you repeat what just happened in Virginia in half a dozen other states, you can start to reverse the gerrymandering problem. You can also start fixing the vote suppression problem, which singlehandedly flipped Wisconsin. If you put the work in and the results show up, you might start seeing something approaching fair elections in the U.S. by 2024 (or as fair as we can ever approach in a world where the 39 million people in the 20 smallest states get 40 senators and 39 million Californians get 2).

 

"Anonymous" is such a bad name for it. Confidential source is more accurate.

 

I've really given up in trying to figure out Lindsey Graham. He's been all over the place on Trump. Now he's spouting the conspiracy lines of Trump and Fox News. Most of the time he seems like a sane person whom I disagree with on politics. Other times he seems like a lunatic. Today for example.

 

Maybe because Trump’s been all over the place, too?

 

Barry who? Let's all listen to BadgerBeer!

 

Well sure, if you want to look at it THAT way.