In addition to what Richard said about Bevin going to a waiver being his most likely next step (he held up Indiana’s current plan as a model) keep in mind Bevin has said that the best way to make sure people have affordable healthcare is to create jobs through the magic of right-to-work and corporate tax cuts. That’s worked so well for Kansas, of course.
Of course, he’s also sworn to cut thousands of state employee jobs across the board too, so we’ll see how that works out, huh.
“People in this town are nervous on both sides, but they ought to be,” Bevin said. “If you are not productive, if you are not adding value, if you are not justifying your existence in terms of a return on the taxpayer’s money you ought to be nervous.
“If the taxpayer is not getting a good return on their tax investment, then we should reevaluate it. I’m agnostic to what that means. I don’t have predetermined notion as to what this means for merit versus non-merit, Democrat versus Republican.
“I’m agnostic. I will come with a blank sheet of paper and I think that is healthy. Somebody who truly is not beholden to anybody. Somebody that doesn’t owe anyone any favors — that’s what makes people nervous about Jenean (running mate Jenean Hampton) and I. We are not beholden to anybody.”
Gotta run government like a business, you know. And it’s all about making a profit, right? Government services are necessary cost of civilization, not profit centers, but of course that’s exactly what voters here wanted, to run it like a business.
You don’t add enough value, you should be nervous. Guess who determines what’s valuable?
Welcome to Bevinstan.
Justify your existence, citizen.
Baud
You have my sympathies, Zandar.
Lalophobic Insomniac
*looks at previous post, then looks at this one, then looks at the previous post again*
*is confused and scared*
BGinCHI
Can someone tell me why it is that politicians who come from the business world cannot fathom what it means to invest?
Do they not understand what the word means?
You would think that at least with infrastructure they would get it: businesses profit and stuff gets build that businesses use to create more business-related stuff. But they can’t even admit that roads and bridges and education are investments.
Do they look at Honduras and see an idyll?
dr. bloor
“I’m agnostic.”
He spelled “ignorant” wrong.
Punchy
KY is about to become the new KS. The gameplan is simple: revise the tax code to fuck revenues, then starve the public schools of funds, claiming lack of funds. Prop up charter and religous schools. Done.
Of all the effed up consequences, the death of quality public education under Bevin is assured. But at least gays can be shamed and everyone can carry guns everywhere!
scav
Well, the “Nobody could have predicted, Sociopaths” tags because I mentally omitted the comma. Sociopaths is our neighbors is exactly one of the lessons I’ve picked up over the last 14 or so years — probably the most important one. Should be a host of stunned little “neighborly” faces when they discover they’re not exactly a part of the in-crowd when the actually -pathic actions start really taking a bite.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
OzarkHillbilly
Maybe Kentuckians should begin their impeachment proceedings now. Oh wait a minute, they asked for this.
scav
@BGinCHI: That’s old-school business. New business is taking a going concern, loading it with debt while extracting maximum short-term profits, continue to do so until the business explodes and then walk away from the ruins with the CEO parachutes fully engaged and the shareholders happy and compensated.
Jeremy
@BGinCHI: Well not all politicians that come from the business world don’t believe in investments. You have democrats that ran businesses and they advocate more spending on things like infrastructure, education, and transportation. I didn’t always agree with former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg but he believed in investing in things that would improve the city. I think it’s really only the far right wing Ayn Rand types that don’t have that same philosophy.
Elizabelle
Have fun there, Kansas of the Appalachian range.
@BGinCHI: Agree about investments. They either don’t or won’t get it.
Be interesting to see how the “Creative Class” responds to Kentucky’s “voters” — the less than 30% who bothered to rouse themselves. Louisville area seems very happening and interesting.
How much fun is it being in Austin or another cool city when you have to hear all the idiocies that come from living in a red state? I would guess it takes time off one’s life, unless you live on snark and sarcasm. Which is not nourishing, in the longterm.
Hal
From the ny Times story
Michelle Zimmerman, a 43-year-old nurse, said she voted Democratic in the last two governor’s races but had voted for Mr. Bevin this time; she found his views more in keeping with her values. “I’m pretty conservative,” she said. One factor in her decision: She and her husband say they can no longer afford their health insurance because the premiums have gone up since the Affordable Care Act went into effect.
rikyrah
this is reason 1,2,3 why I have no sympathy
……….
Joe Sonka
@joesonka
Democratic Sen. Ray Jones on KET saying that Kentucky Democrats don’t criticize Barack Obama enough.
debbie
I’m hoping Kim Davis is feeling nervous.
cahuenga
Well I thing the big question here is – is it narcissism or sociopathy?
debbie
@BGinCHI:
These politicians, like new-school MBAs, only see and care about the bottom line. The markets will take care of the rest.
Baud
@Hal:
I wouldn’t mind that as a reason so much if I thought for a minute that they would hold Republicans equally accountable when bad things happen under their watch. They clearly don’t.
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
LOLGOP @LOLGOP
If Jeb Bush were a stock, he’d be the entire stock market his brother left us in 2009.
6:49 AM – 4 Nov 2015
Ryan
@cahuenga: AoTK?
Zandar
@cahuenga: We’re about to find out what happens when it’s both.
Betty Cracker
I read somewhere voter turnout was around 30% in KY. Maybe it’s pointless to talk about political messaging, strategy, etc., on behalf of a particular candidate or party until the non-participation crisis is addressed?
rikyrah
Chernynkaya
@Chernynkaya
HUGE WIN! Ohio just overwhelmingly voted to stop gerrymandering. Finally some good news.
Thoughtful Today
but, … but, … but, …
… 538 Number Wizards told me that off-cycle elections help the left…
538 “math”?
The next time someone mentions 538 please remind me of yesterday’s election, where right-wingers largely trounced the left-wingers immediately after 538 Math Wizards told me the opposite.
Wtf am I missing?
Off-Presidential elections help the right-wing.
OzarkHillbilly
I may have to reconsider my atheism:
Family questions faith after lamb sacrifice backfires — and cousin is hurled against freeway sign
rikyrah
Donna BrazileVerified account
@donnabrazile
PA party used @POTUS on direct mail for Supreme Court candidates. Dems swept Supreme Court with huge redistricting implications in 2020.
NotMax
Bevin takes the abbreviation KY to heart, gonna screw the less well-off and downtrodden.
Baud
@Thoughtful Today:
Agreed. That read like an right-wing funded “study” all the way.
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
Because that’s not what they teach in MBA school. Modern business theory is all about the short term, which means cutting costs to boost this quarter’s numbers, not about thinking where the money is going to come from next quarter, much less five years from now.
Jeremy
@Hal: Also it’s not like health insurance premiums have never increased before the ACA. I think some people just want to blame the president/ democrats for anything no matter the facts.
rikyrah
tee hee hee
………………….
Obama will decide on Keystone pipeline before he leaves office
By Juliet Eilperin November 3 at 4:36 PM
White House officials said Tuesday that President Obama intends to decide the fate of the Keystone XL oil pipeline during his tenure, rather than suspend the federal review process at the request of the project’s sponsor.
Speaking to reporters, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president “would like to have this determination be completed before he leaves office” and was not inclined to extend the seven-year review process even longer just because one section of the route is still awaiting approval in Nebraska.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-will-decide-on-keystone-pipeline-before-he-leaves-office/2015/11/03/fb4904f4-7f10-11e5-b575-d8dcfedb4ea1_story.html?postshare=8921446587746039
Jeremy
@rikyrah: Wow that is some great news.
amk
@Thoughtful Today:
last night’s round-up
Except for ky harakiri, I don’t see much of trouncing.
D58826
@Betty Cracker: What ‘non-participation crisis’? If the GOP can get 15.1% of it’s voters to the polls why can’t the democrats get 15;2% of theirs? I know its an over simplification but in election after election there is a pitiful turnout but the GOP manages time after time to get enough of their people out to win. It may be an impossible dream to get a 50-60% turnout in an off-year election but in KY yesterday is 15.2% so hard?
Anya
Rachel Maddow interviewed Tom Brokaw to get his analysis of the clown car and the KY’s election. Of course Brokaw drew larger lessons from this one election and spelled doom for Obamacare and Democrats. He basically said that Obamacare was a failure because people of KY rejected. Also, the enrollments are not good and the premiums are getting higher. He also talked about how the election is a rejection of Obama and how that spells trouble for the dems. Basically, we’re all doomed and it’s Obama’s fault.
Pee Cee
@Betty Cracker:
Polls are only open during the day on one day, and only until 6:00 PM. That day’s a workday, which means most would have to take time off from work to vote. And the people who would have the most trouble taking time off from work (lower income working folks) are the ones who are more likely to vote for the party that didn’t win.
This is the system working as designed.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
Maybe it helped with his illness, but it couldn’t do a thing about his stupidity. Driving recklessly while not wearing a seatbelt is testing even God’s ability to help.
Elizabelle
Reader comment from the NYTimes, on their Bevin wins story:
Laughing. Sadly.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: Saw the initial story about the guy who ended up dead atop a highway sign. Horrified the first responders; first time they’d seen that.
Seatbelt coulda prevented that. Skipped the lamb sacrifice story. Poor lil thing.
Dork
Semi-serious quesiton: Will Kim Davis now be allowed to deny gay marriage certs? Wasn’t the previous gubbnah one of the authorities directing her to do so? So can Bevin give her the green-light to resume her tryanny, or is this a federal issue that Bevin cant control?
Anya
I don’t get how KY votes for a guy who was described as a “con man” and who lied about his education background and was a failure as a businessman just because they hate the black guy in Washington. I think this is also a failure of the Dem message.
scav
@OzarkHillbilly: God’s mysterious ways are certainly more palatable and believable when applied to those other people (and football teams). When the Allmighty gets all mysterious and shit with oneself, it’s time to pull the belief and admire plug. See also KY and austarity — in theory. Who knows? Maybe the majority population are bottoms and will take extreme pleasure in it.
Betty Cracker
@D58826: See Pee Cee’s post here, which makes a valid point about how the system is set up to exclude participation from voters who might lean Democratic — that’s just one example of hundreds, of course. But IMO, voter suppression, while reprehensible, isn’t the biggest problem; apathy is.
Kay
This was nice for me because my middle son (who lives in Toledo) backed her. I’m not clear what he was doing to “back her” because he’s not the most talkative person in the world but he did make a vague reference to what sounded like canvassing (?) with his union when I saw him 2 weeks ago. He’s 21 and this is the first time he’s been politically active, other than voting, so I’m glad his candidate won.
rikyrah
GOP win in Kentucky sets up unprecedented Affordable Care Act fight
By David Weigel November 3 at 10:40 PM
When people called Greg Stumbo to talk “Obamacare,” it was usually to say they were against it. The Democratic speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives knew just what to say. President Obama had nothing to do with their health care, not really. They were eligible to find insurance on KYnect, the exchange created by popular outgoing Gov. Steve Beshear (D-Ky.).
“I’d tell em we’ve got Beshearcare,”said Stumbo in an interview Tuesday night, “and they’d be fine with that.”
The disconnect between Obamacare and KYnect was one of the great paradoxes of American politics. In polls, Kentucky voters rejected Obamacare at roughly the rate they rejected the president, 2-1. But they were fond of KYnect, which Beshear created by executive order, bypassing a gridlocked Kentucky legislature. Month by month, Kentuckians took advantage of the state’s Medicaid expansion or the plans offered on the exchange, and the state’s uninsured rate plummeted from 20.4 percent to 9 percent. Beshear predicted that “the Democratic nominee will make this a major issue and will pound the Republicans into the dust with it.”
On Tuesday night, it was the Democrats eating dust. Attorney General Jack Conway, who was expected to replace Beshear, lost in a rout to Tea Party activist Matt Bevin. Conway defended KYnect; Bevin called it a disaster. While his prescription for changing it shifted, he ended the race with a promise to undo Kentucky’s successful experiment.
“I plan to use the open enrollment period in 2016 to transition people from the state-level exchange to the federal exchange,” Bevin told the Cincinnati Enquirer last week. “Once all are transitioned, I would shut down the exchange.” When it came to Medicaid, Bevin pledged to “repeal the expansion as it currently exists, and seek a Section 1115 waiver from the Center for Medicaid Services.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/03/gop-win-in-kentucky-sets-up-unprecedented-affordable-care-act-fight/?tid=pm_politics_pop_bGOP win in Kentucky sets up unprecedented Affordable Care Act fight
By David Weigel November 3 at 10:40 PM
When people called Greg Stumbo to talk “Obamacare,” it was usually to say they were against it. The Democratic speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives knew just what to say. President Obama had nothing to do with their health care, not really. They were eligible to find insurance on KYnect, the exchange created by popular outgoing Gov. Steve Beshear (D-Ky.).
“I’d tell em we’ve got Beshearcare,”said Stumbo in an interview Tuesday night, “and they’d be fine with that.”
The disconnect between Obamacare and KYnect was one of the great paradoxes of American politics. In polls, Kentucky voters rejected Obamacare at roughly the rate they rejected the president, 2-1. But they were fond of KYnect, which Beshear created by executive order, bypassing a gridlocked Kentucky legislature. Month by month, Kentuckians took advantage of the state’s Medicaid expansion or the plans offered on the exchange, and the state’s uninsured rate plummeted from 20.4 percent to 9 percent. Beshear predicted that “the Democratic nominee will make this a major issue and will pound the Republicans into the dust with it.”
On Tuesday night, it was the Democrats eating dust. Attorney General Jack Conway, who was expected to replace Beshear, lost in a rout to Tea Party activist Matt Bevin. Conway defended KYnect; Bevin called it a disaster. While his prescription for changing it shifted, he ended the race with a promise to undo Kentucky’s successful experiment.
“I plan to use the open enrollment period in 2016 to transition people from the state-level exchange to the federal exchange,” Bevin told the Cincinnati Enquirer last week. “Once all are transitioned, I would shut down the exchange.” When it came to Medicaid, Bevin pledged to “repeal the expansion as it currently exists, and seek a Section 1115 waiver from the Center for Medicaid Services.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/03/gop-win-in-kentucky-sets-up-unprecedented-affordable-care-act-fight/?tid=pm_politics_pop_b
OzarkHillbilly
@Roger Moore: You see, I saw that as God’s way of saying, “No, that was NOT a ‘Get out of jail free’ card.” The idiot acted like the sacrifice gave him license to do whatever he felt like.
gene108
This was posted yesterday morning by another commenter:NY Times article on the alarmingly high rate of suicide by middle aged white men.
If there is a real public health crisis among less educated whites, it could explain why election results are so decoupled from reality, i.e. governors with bad economies getting re-elected.
Maybe there is a tipping point, where enough people are filled with bitterness and regret that the old norms of tanking the economy or helping people financially, through Medicaid expansion, no longer have much meaning to enough people that such things no longer dictate election results.
NotMax
Koch-backed nutballs lose, recalled in Colorado county vote.
Elizabelle
Looks like a good day to stay off the internets. Just sick about Kentucky. And all the gloating media will do. And all the false lessons and narratives they will draw from it.
Big story is: 30% voter turnout. I liked someone’s suggestion on earlier thread that, unless 55% of eligible voters turn out, it’s not a valid election. Get rid of offyear elections. Get rid of the midterms. Cut the campaign season way shorter; don’t burn the voters out with negativity.
I wish Canada was not so cold.
Elizabelle
@gene108: Saw that.
Yeah, I wonder.
Zandar
@Betty Cracker: Steve Beshear won handily 4 years ago with lower turnout. 8 years ago he won with higher turnout. KY gubernatorial elections have been between 30-40% for a long time.
It was not turnout.
It was tens of thousands of Kentucky voters, registered Democrats mind you, who decided to vote to burn the state down rather than take assistance from the ni-CLANG! president.
We know this because in down ticket races, Democrats like Alison Grimes and Andy Beshear did ten points better than Conway and won. Beshear, like his dad did four years ago, ran on suing Obama over the EPA regs on coal.
Conway ran on his record of suing Obama over coal too. But he also ran on keeping Kynect and Medicaid expansion.
He lost badly.
We voted for the guy who wants to get rid of it.
rikyrah
Mr. NFTG was BLISTERING ON TWITTER LAST NIGHT.
.
……………..
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Okay here goes… I am sick of the coddling of White Working Class Voters in this country… The rest of us pay the price for their BS.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
I mean… Who gleefully ushered in the Reagan Revolution? Not just elected him but reelected him in a landslide?
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat until that Democrat “Felt their pain” and started cribbing from St. Ronnie’s notebook?
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Who after that Dem left office with an economy in decent shape turned the USA over to the most criminally incompetent administration ever?
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
And after that criminally incompetent administration damn near drives this country into a ditch we have a moment of sanity in 2008…
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
We finally get someone who genuinely tries to fix the mess his predecessors left behind but then…
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Who decided that change wasn’t coming fast enough and saddled him with the most inept Congress in history?
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Get mad if you wish but we can’t move forward the way we could because we’re constantly having to account for butthurt White folks..
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
And this shit isn’t new KY is just part of the same bullshit story that unfolds all over. KS, WI, IL, FL, MI, and here in TX.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Matt Bevin is a clown. And yet all he had to do was basically go “OGGA BUGGA SCARY BLACK MAN!” and he gets the keys to the Govs mansion.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
And I am going to be a hard ass about this. Because every other ethnic group had to get the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” speech…
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
So yeah I hear y’all about low turnout, sorry leadership at the DNC, RW media/billionaires… I get it and it’s all valid however….
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
We’ve been dealing with this bullshit since Nixon. White Working Class Voters consistently voting against their own interests.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
I was already incredulous over that NY Times story about White folks wanting a “gentler drug war” this KY thing just added to it.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
There’s more I can and probably will say later but I’m tired.. I’m tired of good people in states like KY having to suffer b/c of dumb MFs.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Last thing: If you think you hurt Obama by voting against your own interests you’re a fucking idiot and deserve what’s coming to you.
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
Barack Obama is going to be good. Especially after he leaves office. His and his family’s health care is secure….but the rest of y’all?
Mr. NFTG @Kennymack1971
That’s it. I’m done. Maybe one day Working Class White folks you’ll wake up and join the rest of us who get it… One day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dork: It is a federal issue.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
They don’t have to get it because they are never held accountable for getting it wrong. All the bullshit hyper fear mongering about Ebola that even the supposed liberal media engaged in during the run up to the 2014 elections and they didn’t talk about what a clusterfuck Brownback’s economic policies were for Kansans. I don’t hear many stories, certainly not on the teevee news, about how many people will die or suffer needlessly because their elected officials refused Medicaid expansion.
max
@Thoughtful Today: The next time someone mentions 538 please remind me of yesterday’s election, where right-wingers largely trounced the left-wingers immediately after 538 Math Wizards told me the opposite.
How shall we say it? 538 is excellent at poll aggregation? Perhaps not so much at anything else? (Silver is a Broderite centrist as far as I can tell – which is to say if he wasn’t gay he’d be over there with Andrew Sullivan (negative the hysteria). Wolf Blitzer. Michael Bloomberg. Somewhere over there.)
max
[‘Never have understood the upper class fetish for how things are said with no concern with what is said.’]
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Ohio Democrats actually had a good night. They re-focused local, local, local and it paid off. The credit will go to Nina Turner (who is a bit of a rising star) and David Pepper because they’re the younger “reform the Party” bunch.
Politics is local. Stop me if you’ve heard that before :)
D58826
@Betty Cracker: I agree that apathy is a big problem, maybe the biggest. I also agree that the deck is being stacked by the GOP. But I saw last night that Bevins got some his biggest vote totals from the eastern and poorer part of the state. These presumably would be the very voters (unless they were unemployed) who would have a hard time getting to the polls during the day and yet enough managed to.
And the GOP ‘stacking the deck’ while certainly valid in 2014 and again this year but what about 2010? The states hadn’t been gerrymandered like they have in the past half dozen years and voter-id was just starting. Whatever the message was the GOP turned out enough of its base, in spite of the difficulty, to destroy the democrats. The democrats on the other hand stayed home and did what ever they do. Including 2010 the democrats have lost a dozen or more each of governors, Senators, house members and over 900 state legislatures.
MomSense
@Zandar:
Yeah it’s not always turnout as was the case in Maine in the 2014 midterm elections. I talked to a lot of these voters who absolutely wanted to burn the state down. They also got a big assist from wealthy voters who lean liberal but really couldn’t vote for someone who wasn’t educated and erudite enough for them.
@rikyrah:
I can’t say that he is wrong in his assessment, but I do feel sorry for the poor people and especially the children who will suffer as a result. This is not their fault and the consequences are terrible.
delosgatos
Anyone else seeing the site completely unusable this morning? Constant reloads on iPad, the same post content repeated over and over?
shell
So are the posts fucked up enough
PurpleGirl
I love how these guys wear jeans and jeans jackets to appear like they are “jus plain folk”. Down home, good working folk… but if you look at their hands, they have manicures, no calluses, no evidence of actual work because they are the ultimate paper pushers.
D58826
@Elizabelle: I would add either making Tuesday election day a federal holiday for everyone or change the election day to Sat and Sunday. Could also open polling places in shopping malls. When I do early voting at the local library, they find out where I live and adjust the voting machine according;y. They could do the same in shopping malls.
amk
LOLGOP @LOLGOP 38m38 minutes ago
Democrats skip elections like Republicans skip parts of the Bible.
130 retweets 176 likes
scav
This really is a day for God’s Harsh Judgement Is For Other People. From NYT (Michigan Lawmakers Ousted Over Affair Lose Bid to Regain House Seats)
Kay
@PurpleGirl:
I feel like the jean thing is libertarian. Rand Paul fans have a picture they like of him where he has a suit coat on and then hiking shorts and remarkably pristine “work boots”. I think the point is he has to wear a suit for Big Government so it shows above the desk,but really he wishes he could just cut brush. It means they’re young and hip- not Republicans.
rikyrah
Which group deserves more contempt in Kentucky:
1. You got healthcare because of KYNECT, but you couldn’t be bothered to show up to vote.
2. You got healthcare because of KYNECT, but you voted for Bevin.
Who is crazier?
Zandar
Then again, Conway was a terrible candidate. There’s no real mystery.
Sherparick
Kentucky, just like Kansas, Wisconsin, Louisiana before it, are about to become a living example of H.L. Mencken’s quote:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.”
Johnny Dollar
@Zandar: Didn’t we have a black President four years ago? How did Beshear win then?
shomi
Ok so now that we know Zandar is also Richard, wonder how many other sock puppet accounts are posting here. It’s probably just Cole maybe one or 2 other guys under all these handles.
Wonder if the genius who (tries to) run this site will ever figure out how to turn off caching to stop double posts.
rikyrah
uh uh uh
know it’s true, but still.
……………….
Half of black millennials know victim of police violence
Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press
Updated 4:02 am, Wednesday, November 4, 2015
WASHINGTON (AP) — Years before the high-profile deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, more than half of African-American millennials indicated they, or someone they knew, had been victimized by violence or harassment from law enforcement, a new report says.
The information, from the “Black Millennials in America” report issued by the Black Youth Project at the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago, reflects starkly different attitudes among black, Latino, Asian and white millennials when it comes to policing, guns and the legal system in the United States. Researchers, who have surveyed millennials several times during the past decade, point out that the disparities existed well before the “Black Lives Matter” movement began.
In the 2009 Mobilization and Change Survey, 54.4 percent of black millennials answered yes to the question “Have you or anyone you know experienced harassment or violence at the hands of the police?” Almost one-third of whites, 1 in 4 Latinos and 28 percent of Asian-Americans surveyed said yes to the same question.
http://abc13.com/news/report-50-percent-of-black-millennials-know-a-police-violence-victim/1067557/
greengoblin
I am curious as to why the polling was so off. Conway slight lead in polling turned out to be a Bevin rout. I think the polling for last Senate race was also way off. What’s wrong with KY polling?
japa21
@scav: So basically she is saying, “I did a bad, bad thing, but it is unfair that people were told that I did a bad, bad thing.”
Betty Cracker
@Zandar: I don’t know KY, so I defer to your greater knowledge about the feral thinking of local voters. But I still think the turnout / apathy issue is key because it seems to be true that when only a small portion of voters show up, that portion invariably includes the most extreme, committed, addled, nut-ball voters on the rolls — the spite voters, the OMG they’re coming for mah guns voters, etc. Maybe higher turnout would just mean more assholes expressing the same dumb-fuck opinion with their vote, but I’m not convinced that’s the case.
Zandar
@Betty Cracker:
In Louisville or Lexington you’d be right.
In 95% of the other 110+ rural counties here, where turnout was higher than four years ago by about 2k per county on average, they all went to Bevin.
That’s your ball game.
scav
@japa21: That and “I should not be penalized for the bad bad thing, that is the greatest unfairness of all.”
D58826
@Betty Cracker: I think it would depend on the percentage of nutcases in the overall election poll. If 70% of the electorate thinks (and I use that word advisedly) like Sarah Pallin, then no amount of increasing in the non-nut turnout will make a difference. But if the nuts are only 15% of the electoral base and they all turn out as opposed to a much smaller number of non-nuts well then you have Kansas and Kentucky, etc.
kindness
To the good citizens of Kentucky I wish you the best of luck. As far as I’m concerned you voted (or chose not to vote) for hell. Welcome to it. I sure am not going to lift a finger to save you. Bless your hearts.
SteveKnNKY
It is going to be pretty bad for a lot of folks.
Any worker that participates in the public pension system, the fact bevin wants charters and vouchers (how and why since we border Cincinnati, OH and see the utter corruption of Ohio charters) and selecting the “if you get sick – die quickly” medical option.
I am done trying to understand how people vote against their own interests.
My worry and stress has my headache going on it’s 14th hour.
Maybe there will be cuts to subsidized lunches for all the students in Catholic schools who parents’ voted bevin?!?!
I’ll just vote my income quintile and stop sending donations to the area social service agencies.
joyfulA
@Jeremy: @Jeremy: Democratic businessman and new PA governor Wolf hasn’t agreed with the GOP lege yet on a budget. He promised to restore the $ they cut from education over the past 4 years and to add $ to the retirement fund.
schrodinger's cat
Its hard to feel sorry for the willfully stupid and unengaged, I include both the people who vote against their own interests and the people who can’t be bothered to vote.
D58826
@joyfulA: While I support what Wolf is doing the resulting impasse has many Pa schools issuing IOU’s instead of paychecks and running up large interest charges to the local banks for borrowing needed operating funds. As usual the bankers win.
PurpleGirl
@debbie: Well, no; her position is elected. She won’t get fired.
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle:
I think you’re going to see them keep losing out. Tech in particular needs a big group of young, talented workers and they’re not going to pick up and move to some dumb red state for no reason. Austin only happened because it was already cool before the current state of right wing stupidity. That’s not going to happen again. At best you’ll get a red state city with the best of the red state people coming to live in it. A Salt Lake City, for instance. Not exactly going to take the world by storm.
PurpleGirl
@debbie: I suggest one modification — they only care about SHORT TERM bottom line. They only think in terms of the next quarter, maybe the next two quarters.
Kay
@scav:
That was a lot of fun to follow because of the absolute self-absorption of both of those people. Just a complete and utter misunderstanding of what their jobs were, or what this “public office” thing is supposed to be about.
Forget “public service”, actually. They would be nightmare employees in any sector, public or private. 100% drama, no work.
Another Holocene Human
@max:
What in heaven’s name does this even mean? Oh, and FTR, Andypants is gay as well.
Lamh36
so this guy basically wants to do what Jindal did here in Louisiana? hmm isn’t working out well for is down here, but ok then…I guess the white guy will do it right as opposed to that darkie Jindal…good luck with that KY.
since we are talking about governors races, here in LA-GOV race, they are doing the thing as in KY, where they link the Dem gov candidate to Obama.
the only thing that may save LA Gov is if folks really are embarrassed enough to not want Diaper Dave as guv, or another Diaper Dave scandal.
sad fact is that Vitter still has a 9 out of 10 chance of becoming LA Gov either way ya play it
Hoodie
My dad used to tell me that sometimes you just have to accept that fact that your salt of the earth neighbors are dumb and/or crazy. Deaton’s new paper tells you a lot, providing yet more evidence that the “white working class” is in a downward spiral of self-destruction. That hits areas like KY hard and results like this just confirm that. I constantly hear my wife’s working class relatives from LA bitching about lazy black folks on welfare. Truth is, their kids have the same problems and their lives are just as big a mess, but they live in denial and make themselves feel better by denigrating others. Democracy is not necessarily going to fix things when the demos is suffering from widespread mental illness. The real failure is that much of the elite in this country is corrupt and irresponsible.
Another Holocene Human
@gene108: Middle age white people aren’t ready for their diminished circumstances. They aren’t prepared. So they lack resilience in the face of it. They commit suicide, get into drinking or drugs.
Or they kill their whole family.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Holocene Human: I wonder how much of their despair is compounded by the Fox/right-wing talk-radio complex they’re enamored of telling them that everything is horrible 24/7.
Betty Cracker
@D58826: That sounds about right and dovetails with what Zandar said above re: higher turnout in counties that genuinely seem to prefer assholes. I don’t doubt there are some regions that just aren’t within Democrats’ reach right now. Still, when the vast majority of people can’t even be bothered to vote, that seems like both a disgrace — and a huge opportunity.
Another Holocene Human
@Gin & Tonic: The propaganda helps them pull the trigger on GOP austerian policies and politicians.
But shit really DOES suck. And fascism is the usual result.
This is one reason we have to fight so hard. To keep the GOP out. To keep them from crashing the economy. To keep the pot lid from boiling over. To prevent the outbreak of ethnic violence on a massive scale and the end, for generations, of our pluralistic society.
I didn’t say forever, because the fascists never win. They just kill a lot of people on the way to losing.
Another Holocene Human
@Betty Cracker: Have you ever talked to the dumbshits who don’t vote? Here’s my experience:
a) self absorbed as fuck, like talking to a rock. believe what they want to believe
b) cynical dummy with Dunning-Kruger, very susceptible to RW propaganda
c) was working that day, have a shitty boss and have to prioritize their voting–4 votes a year? fuggedaboudit
ellie
@Kay: Carty and Michael Bell lost? Wonderful!
BGinCHI
@gene108:
Louis CK, predictably, said it best:
“Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.”
There is a nasty negativity that preys on people and it is killing those whose coping mechanisms are destructive.
Betty Cracker
@Another Holocene Human: Yes — I’ve done a fair amount of canvassing and have certainly run into those types too. But in my experience, the #1 reason non-voters don’t bother is because they don’t think it makes a difference. They think the whole system is corrupt from top to bottom, all politicians are bought and paid for and it truly doesn’t matter who gets in office. I think they’re wrong, of course, but they’re not completely crazy to think that.
rikyrah
THE.FIX.IS.IN
THE.PHUCKING.FIX.IS.IN
………………………………
Cop Who Allegedly Abused Black Women Faces All-White Jury
Former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw is on trial for 36 charges — including rape, sexual battery, stalking, and indecent exposure — based on allegations from more than a dozen black women.
posted on Nov. 3, 2015, at 5:57 p.m.
Jessica Testa
BuzzFeed News Reporter
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/cop-who-allegedly-abused-black-women-faces-all-white-jury?utm_term=.niXrEnx4YW#.rqbp4jq3d5
debbie
@Kay:
Kay, I heard this morning that Tiberi’s hoping to take over Ways and Means. I can’t tell if he has much of a chance, but I think it could be bad news for those who hoped to consign Reaganomics to the dustbin of history.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Which is not to suggest the Gov Elect Bevin will be swayed by that…
Gimlet
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kim-davis-appeals-jail_563a1d53e4b0411d306ef387
Kim Davis’ lawyer with the Liberty Counsel, asked the appeals court to reverse four of the lower court’s rulings, including the order that Davis issue licenses and the decision to hold her in contempt.
“By imprisoning Davis and threatening to hold her hostage indefinitely as a prisoner of her conscience, the district court imposed direct pressure and substantial burden on Davis, forcing her to choose between her religious beliefs and forfeiting her essential personal freedom on one hand, or abandoning those beliefs to keep her freedom on the other hand,” Christman wrote.
By jailing Davis and ordering her deputy clerks to issue the licenses, Christman wrote, the district judge “commandeered” the public office Davis was elected to oversee.
Davis also filed a counter suit against Gov. Steve Beshear, who sent a letter to all county clerks on the day of the Supreme Court’s ruling that directed them to begin issuing licenses to same-sex couples. He declined to call the legislature for a special session to craft a law to accommodate religious clerks, and told them instead to issue the licenses or resign.
Another Holocene Human
Good results in Boston election, according to Wes Lowery. Sounds like incumbent Murphy needed to go.
Frankensteinbeck
@greengoblin:
The same thing happened in 2012, in KY and in several of the Deep South states. The explanation is simple. Kentucky is a cesspool of hatred, racial and otherwise. These people care. They care a lot. Spiting Obama is overwhelmingly important to them. The states with a major racist problem voted very differently from their polls because this isn’t the normal dynamic of how much registered voters are actually motivated to vote.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Her belief that she is above the law is protected by the Constitution?
Belafon
@Another Holocene Human: And they easily accept the idea that it’s the blahs and the Messicans that are destroying their lives, and not the wealthy, because a person’s character can be judged by the size of their bank account.
AxelFoley
@rikyrah:
HAHAHAHAHA
ThresherK
@greengoblin: Some people are saying “voting machines”. Compared to the vote totals other Dems got in KY, it is irresponsible not to speculate.
benw
Looking for a silver lining here. According to the Weigel article that @rikyrah pasted above:
If I understand Richard’s previous post, the Medicaid waiver that Bevin wants will make some people leave Medicaid because of the premiums, but most will still have some (worse) coverage. And everyone enrolled through Kynect will go to Healthcare.gov next year. So the uninsured rate should stay down around the 10% level. Twice as low as pre-ACA, even under Bevin. It seems like Bevin will do more damage by cutting taxes and subsequently destroying public schools, unions, and pensions. In other words, Kentucky will become Kansas, but with some form of Medicaid expansion.
Gimlet
@Another Holocene Human:
Her religious freedom means she can refuse to issue all marriage licenses (so that she won’t discriminate) and force residents to get licenses from another county.
rikyrah
Lee Fang ✔ @lhfang
Purdue Pharma, makers of Oxycontin, which has killed huge numbers of Kentuckians, helped fund Bevin’s campaign via RGA.
max
@Another Holocene Human: What in heaven’s name does this even mean? Oh, and FTR, Andypants is gay as well.
One reads the tells – if it wasn’t de rigeur to be a Democrat in his social circuit, he’d be a standard issue Republican. As for Sully, he was an overt conservative in spite of being gay – meaning he was positioned as an upper-class Tory, partly as a contrarian move against England’s particular Labourite culture of the time. The American social situation is quite different. If you’re gay and not inclined to be in the closet, you’re generally an automatic Democrat – until you make a lot of money. See: any number of techo-libertarian types.
If you read the personnel choices and their output and whatnot, you get the social liberal/economic schtick he’s coming from, a la Michael Kinsley with math.
He won a bunch of money with online poker, so that’s the style he has – not that he has no positions (as an academic would), but he conceals it well.
max
[‘I too have a played a lot of poker. Of the in person variety.’]
Berial
How badly run do the red states have to be before the voters realize it’s the ‘red team’ that is the problem?
Personally I think that as long as group x exists they’ll never turn way from the Republicans where ‘x’ is Democrats, pro-lifers, anti-guners, someone somewhere that might be on welfare enjoying themselves for more than 15 seconds.
I cannot believe how BADLY the red states are run and how badly the Republican’s ruin a state, yet the voting public not only keeps doubling down on them, but CANNOT IMAGINE voting any other way.
Another Holocene Human
@Berial: forget the specifics because if one stops bringing the spite voters out they’ll invent another one
rikyrah
Cruz’s silent super PACs a growing worry for campaign
Four pro-Cruz super PACs are sitting on huge sums of money, but have run virtually no TV ads so far.
By Shane Goldmacher
11/02/15 05:08 AM EST
The super PACs backing Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential run have yet to reserve any TV time in the early primary states — or anywhere else — despite a combined $38 million war chest that ranks second among presidential contenders only to Jeb Bush’s $103 million operation.
The total absence of ads has created confusion and growing consternation inside the Cruz campaign, which cannot legally communicate with its allied super PACs and has had to watch as its rivals lock in tens of millions of dollars in ads before prices spike, as they typically do as elections near.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ted-cruz-silent-super-pacs-2016-215422#ixzz3qXZFZvRe
D58826
OT but remember that HERO cop ikn Fox Lake Ill. murdered by 3 thugs (one black)_ last September. Police supporters all upset that black lives matter was responsible for his death. Well turns out its a bit more complicated. It was an elaborately stage suicide. He was stealing money from the department, money laundering, forgery, etc all to pay for his travel/porn and mortgage. Wonder if Faux news will cover it
Ken T
@Pee Cee: Exactly. It’s not just by chance that reducing poll hours, eliminating early voting, and reducing numbers of voting machines have been a key Republican strategy for years. It is all calculated to prevent working class people from being able to vote. And it’s working quite well.
D58826
@Ken T: True but it sounds like in KY, at least, the working class people who did vote still voted for Bevins.
Gimlet
@rikyrah:
Probably angling for a VP slot and will throw his PAC money at the front-runner.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@OzarkHillbilly:
That accident happened a few miles from where we live (and was even closer to where BillinGlendaleCA) lives. I’m sure I’ll get some flak for saying this, but I was not at all surprised the victim was a 20ish Armenian man. They are locally notorious for being absolutely terrible drivers.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@D58826:
Jaysus, this is just my day for local connections to stories, isn’t it? My mom and brother live near there. They were probably all hyped up at the thought of some black guys (probably from Waukegan, amirite?) invading their space. Sigh.
It’s a pretty blue-collar area, FWIW. Not quite exurban, but getting there.
PurpleGirl
@Betty Cracker: For example, take the election of the Queens Borough District Attorney. I didn’t bother to vote yesterday. Richard Brown was running on all three lines — Democratic, Republican and Conservative. There was no opposition. Would it matter on which line he got the most votes — no. If there is a choice, I vote. But yesterday, there were choices to make.
Peale
@rikyrah: Those PACs aren’t supposed to support Cruz, but buy the support from others so that when he returns to the Senate he’ll have more allies.
scav
@D58826: Wonder if the bulk of police and police supporters will ever acknowledge it. Because police are necessarily heroes.
jnfr
@Pee Cee:
I think that’s exactly right. And I note for the record that here in Colorado where the election did not go so badly, we have universal mail-in ballots and non-gerrymandered districts.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
“KY’s for closers!”
Kay
@rikyrah:
We’re not allowed to talk about that, rikyrah. The pharma role in all this has gone down the memory hole and all we’re allowed to talk about is the illegal drug use- heroin.
Purdue pharma’s direct and aggressive campaign to market that drug to that group of low income people in 3 states will go completely unpunished, while we’ll do giant quasi-military drug sweeps for heroin. Basically the same poor people that company targeted for drug addiction will now serve jail and prison sentences that come out of that company targeting them.
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
Amen! The turnout thing is crucial!!!! Why do people not vote?????
Here in WA state, we vote by mail, for Pete’s sake and you don’t have to use a stamp if you don’t want to — just drop in drop boxes conveniently located at libraries and other convenient locations. Our voting remains about 50%. WTF!!!!!
Tom Q
My take on last night overall is it was mediocre. The press is going to focus on KY because it was the highest profile office available and because it was seen as contrary to polling. But 1) Conway only ever got in polling about what his vote total turned out to be — 45% or so; 2) all analysts were wary of his lead, because of this, and because 3) it’s Kentucky, for Christ’s sake, a state Obama lost by 22%. Some of these deep-red presidential states can resist on the local level for a while — as some moderate Republicans did for a while in states like Maryland or Rhode Island — but eventually the state’s natural lean is going to take over (for the GOP, especially in an off-year). For Tom Brokaw to trumpet this as some indication of a wave for 2016 is ignorant/purposely misleading: take your pick.
Otherwise, it was disappointing to fall one short in VA, but some locals feared losses, so I view that as a standoff. And PA/NJ/CO school board were unmitigated triumphs — all in states that at some point next year Republicans will claim they might carry. For Democrats to go around after these results screaming woe is us/doom is inevitable is ludicrously over-wrought and plays into media narratives.
The press is also touting that NBC poll showing Hillary & Carson tied. Want to know how serious to take that? Ask any Republican official — on sodium pentothal if possible — how happy they’d be to have Carson as their nominee.
Cacti
If Kentucky Dems are going to lose anyway, maybe they could run a few candidates who don’t feel compelled to apologize for being Democrats.
But I’m sure Senator Grimes and Governor Conway would disagree with me.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Berial:
Honestly, I am coming to the conclusion that those voters have been taught by their evangelical churches that it’s their religious duty to suffer so their state can be more “moral.” It’s sick, but for me it explains why those voters are completely impervious to reason and logic. If it’s your religious duty to suffer without health insurance and a sin to accept it, no amount of logical argument is going to convince those people to vote for it.
Elie
@gene108:
Yes, I put that article in my comments a couple of times yesterday. There are actually two articles, one on suicide in small towns and the other on the increasing mortality rate for white middle aged men.
It is extremely important to acknowledge what is happening out there in the red states and rural areas. Besides incredible rates of suicide, which are high enough to influence the death rate of all white middle class men, the rate of drug and substance abuse is sky high. There are sad and hopeless people filled with rage as they enter their “golden years” without savings and no jobs. Somebody has to be the blame — who better than a black man on whom they can project every last molecule of their hopeless rage. It must be all those foreigners and immigrants, right? It can’t be that our educational system has not adapted to the needs of the modern world, that they are in competition globally, not just with the black guy down the street.
Somehow, Democrats have to change our message to move from that of just supporting various interest groups in our constituency, to broad issues that somehow these folks (or their children) can hear. I think its too late for the old timers or late middle agers but they will be fucking up elections (and this country) for the next ten years at least.
Cacti
@Elie:
Disagree completely.
There is no unifying message that will trump tribal prejudices. Marx was wrong. Proletariat economic solidarity is a pipe dream.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elie:
When you’ve been telling yourself for decades that you’re better than Those People because you don’t need government aid, and now you need government aid, which makes you no better than Those People …
Well, it’s not a shock that they’re killing themselves (consciously or not) rather than admit that they shot themselves in the foot.
Elie
@Cacti:
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Yes, yes, I know all of what you say… its been said a jillion times!
But we have to try to DO something about it… these people will be effing up our country and government for the next decade or more.
Do we just say, well, hmmm – ok? Donno about you but I am not willing to get dragged into the crevasse of despair with them — at least without some effort to both help them and help ourselves…
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Q: There are also recent polls showing Hillary and Trump tied. Carson seems to do slightly better. But the whole thing seems to heavily depend on who’s getting positive buzz recently, and standing in the primaries.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elie:
Honestly, today I’m feeling like what we need are missionaries — people from liberal evangelical churches who speak that same language but can counter the religious arguments they’re hearing.
There’s a really interesting documentary called “Hell House” that’s about one of those conservative evangelical churches that tries to convert people by doing their own haunted house at Halloween. The one family they focus on most is a single father with four kids, two of whom are disabled. His wife ran off and hasn’t been heard from since. He freely admits that, without the emotional support of that church group, he probably would have killed himself long ago.
People are desperate, and they don’t see how a faceless government bureaucrat is going to fill their emotional need for community support. I think we really have to put a lot of thought into how to build community support for people outside those racist white evangelical churches.
(And it’s needed in the inner cities, too, but I digress.$
Linnaeus
@Elie:
It’s a struggle. Always has been. Always will be. Sometimes people forget that.
Elie
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Amen, sister. Our own people are suffering with some of the same issues… we know that to be true but somehow we have not been able to find common ground. What happened to churches that used to advocate for the weak and damaged? Why did the right appropriate all the language and meaning of religion? Progressives don’t seem to have organizations or institutions like unions any more but can we make something up to address people’s very real deep social and practical needs?
Our economy and society is becoming very inhospitable for anyone without a education and a leg up financially from having had strong economic foundation from their families. Jobs are melting away that used to provide solid livings for people with less preparation, but no more. It is hard to have people care about others when you are barely keeping your head above water yourself. We have to face this in our policy and politics and so far, though we have the right values, we aren’t getting through to these folks…
Gavin
@cahuenga:
Sociopathy is further down the scale.. Narcissism is a light version of sociopathy.. they’re not really distinct.
Interestingly, “sociopathy” is not a term in the DSM5. It’s a sliding scale from narcissism to psychopathy.
gus
Looking at you, Kim Davis.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Elie:
I think many liberals are not impervious to the “I can do it all myself” mentality — it’s a very old feature of US culture. I think people also don’t realize that unions had a social function back in their heyday, not just an economic function. They would have charity drives and dances and social events beyond just work-related stuff. A lot of that has really fallen away and people are at loose ends, so they turn to these evangelical churches that offer the same kind of stuff.
mai naem mobile
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think liberals underestimate the.evangelical whackjobs. I’ve seen people really listen to these pastors. You can sit there and say its not legal but the IRS doesn’t even have the resources to go after tax cheats forget about church pastors. And,yes, apparently there are some.passages in the bible that pastors use to say that poor people need to suffer. The other part that liberals don’t realize is that a lot of these churches which are controlled by these crazies are social gathering places,not even necesssarily primarily for a religious purpose. People move around more. Families aren’t as large. Churches can be seen as a ‘safe’ place to make friends and if your friends vote conservative,you will too.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@mai naem mobile:
Yep yep yep. We are on the exact same page.
Somehow, the idea of “community” has gotten a really bad rap from liberals, probably because a lot of conservatives wield it like a club. But humans are social animals. We like to sort ourselves into groups. Right now, we’re letting conservatives dictate that sorting instead of giving people viable alternatives.
mai naem mobile
@gus: Kim Davis doesn’t give a sheet. She’ll just go on the wingnut welfare circuit and make the same money giving five speeches as she did working all year at her job.
Elie
@mai naem mobile:
These so called “whackjobs” help troubled folks think that something can make sense. That there is hope for them…
People of all stripes are very alienated. We have a very materialistic society and even the nuclear family is falling apart (not to mention the demise of the extended family).
We progressives are in our heads a lot — in a rational world that I don’t think that these people experience. They can’t get jobs or keep jobs and everywhere they see examples that brown and black people are making it in growing numbers, while they are left isolated, sick and not part of the “cool kids” anymore…
I don’t have answers, but I am pretty sure that disparaging their (and many of our) very real needs, isn’t going to help us solve this. Maybe we need to “convert” some of those churches to our side somehow?
daverave
OT, but entirely symptomatic:
https://nppa.org/node/72817
Fuck Rupert M. and his impact on American institutions. Why won’t he just die already???
Another Holocene Human
@D58826: The Susan Smith of cop plots.
Calouste
@Cacti: That Marx was wrong about the solidarity of the proletariat has been known since it turned out that the proletariat didn’t have much solidarity with each other but instead rushed to the front to fight each other in World War I.
gelfling545
@dr. bloor: Well, the Latin based equivalent of “agnostic” (which is from the Greek) is “ignoramus”.
Another Holocene Human
@PurpleGirl: My mother taught me to show up and cast a blank ballot in a situation like that.
If write-in line is available, and you really hate the guy, write in a cartoon character.
sparrow
@Pee Cee: This is exactly correct.
Can ANYONE explain to me why I observed that fully 40% of the commenters on a Bernie Sanders Facebook post arguing for a NATIONAL HOLIDAY for voting day, were against the idea? These were Bernie supporters, supposedly left-of-left. But they were all worried that “small businesses would suffer”, which is about the most idiotic weighing of priorities (and ignoring of reality) that I have heard.
But that 40% man. If even dems are against the idea, then things are really fucked.
Another Holocene Human
@Tom Q:
This, and you are spot on about KY polling. Wishful thinking + doom and gloom = the GOS rollercoaster. I’d like to step off please. Which way to the vomit hosing off stations?
CindyH
@D58826: I ran phone banks and GOTV in NC in 2010 and 2012 to registered Democrats. Outside of liberal pockets in Durham and Orange County, the registered Dems were voting Republican and repeating GOP talking points when I engaged with them. So even getting the Dems out to vote didn’t help. In 2008, NC went to President Obama by 4 votes per precinct and we got downticket. Most of that was because the Obama campaign registered new voters who didn’t come back to vote again after they didn’t get their ponies.
Another Holocene Human
@Elie:
It must not be that they voted for Reagan to dismantle the social welfare system … and he did. Or for Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America[‘s Chamber of Commerce] … and he kept it. Or for GWB to help out his rich buddies, that is, “the base.” And he sure kept that promise.
The wages of sin is ______.
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti:
Marx was right about England. And Germany too.
The US is … special.
mai naem mobile
@Elie: I’m not sure these people are that reachable. I sometimes think pushing GOTV with younger minorities and women is lower hanging fruit. I really think the key is GOTV but that involves getting people involved in civics in general so that they can understand what their vote can change. I see a lot of young people who can’t connect tangible things in their lives with politics. I’m not sure how to get there.
Chris T.
Yeah, if each taxpayer’s investment (i.e., money) isn’t getting a big positive return for that individual, the things he’s taxpaying-investing in should be abandoned or destroyed. Money’s sole purpose is to make more money! And those other people are just things, that can be abandoned at will!
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/340272-evil-begins-when-you-begin-to-treat-people-as-things
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): British social services provides that kind of support but it costs $$$. And Americans refuse to tax themselves. Somehow they will open their wallet repeatedly for a shady preacher. I think it’s because Americans were beaten as children in far greater numbers and with far more savagery than Europeans.
Kay
@Tom Q:
The state level losses (not Kentucky particularly, but the bleeding at the state level) are really treacherous for Democrats because they serve to intensify the national focus of Democrats which then leads to more state losses. They’re in a kind of trap. They bet the whole wad on national which leads to state losses which leads to the national becoming that much more important. It’s just too narrow a path for a national political Party to follow.
Another Holocene Human
@Elie: The liberal church institutions have been steadily shrinking with the shrinking of the middle class.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Another Holocene Human:
I think a lot of liberals underestimate the extent to which Reagan was able to make “welfare” equal “black” and stigmatize it so that even white people who would be eligible would be reluctant to take advantage of it. People forget that LBJ’s Great Society programs included the rural poor (who still are mostly white).
Reagan succeeded in racially stigmatizing the very idea of government assistance, and racist churches helped make it a matter of morality and sin to accept government help. And that’s where we are today, and why we can’t reach these people with logic and self-interest. They have been taught that their self-interest is selfish and sinful, and they need to suffer.
Another Holocene Human
@Gavin: I’ve dealt on close terms with narcissists and sociopaths and only in the case of one individual, who evinces narcissism with a high degree of sadism, do the categories seem to overlap. Yes, they both lie. Yes, they’re both self-centered. Yes, they’re both superficial. Perhaps that is where the confusion lies. (Also, sociopathic killers are often noted to have a personality trait of narcissism, which is different from NPD.) Underneath it all, narcissists are deeply insecure and project a false persona. Underneath it all, sociopaths are very, very, very angry at every other human being alive and are incapable of loving or trusting them. Many narcissists have been overachievers and had great success in the world, like Steve Jobs. Many sociopaths have gotten their asses carted off to prison at a young age. Pee Wee Gaskins showed traits of sociopathy, although he may have been a psychopath as well.
Someone could be both, I suppose.
And psychopathy is linked to a brain disorder which is either genetic or caused by trauma or both. You can be a narcissist or a sociopath without any brain abnormalities. Psychopaths have a very special set of traits, and unlike the former two, may have severe problems coping with normal life.
Finally, whatever DSM V says–quite controversial with the psych community I gather–the British law courts consider NPD and psychopathy to be legally distinct.
Another Holocene Human
pps–don’t want to imply there haven’t been a number of NPD killers, including NPD serial killers
typical NPD murder is to kill for money, fraud, for property or insurance
Sherparick
@BGinCHI: These cats have been inhaling Ayn Rand since they were 15. John Galts don’t need no stinking public infrastructure or public employees.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I think the guy who wrote about the shame was really interesting. Because the white people I know haven’t hesitated one minute to sign up for food stamps and take any help they could grab. Assistance is spotty, however. The shame guy essentially said he was made to feel shame for being a “failure” and that kept him enmeshed in his hateful church and voting for hateful GOP pols.
Another Holocene Human
@sparrow: You’re making a big assumption about who is really posting on that page, unless you happen to know all of them personally, in which case, keep on keeping on, lefty betters.
Another Holocene Human
@Elie:
Because it sounds like you’re pissing in the wind and trying to distract, derail, and divert our resources. The Dems have places to go for votes. Appalachia ain’t it. Much better folk than us have been trying to figure out what went wrong in Evangelical-land and how to stop it/change it since the late 1970s and not only have they not succeeded, the union of GOP and Church is finally reaching its own natural peak and decline, all on its own. The brave new generation decided they were turned off by Hateful Church and are walking away as they reach age of majority and slip out of the grasp of their parents. This tendency has motivated even more creepy, patriarchal, control-obsessed fringe movements like Gothard’s but even those children grew up, created Homeschoolers Anonymous, and now the truth is coming out about the rape factory he called a church. That’s gonna put a chill on recruitment.
These motherfuckers are reaching the end of the line all on their own. Every attempt to “reach” them has failed. They are a lost cause. Let them be. Tend to the living. (Ask yourself, where is US population concentrated? What does the biggest US pop bulge in history look like? What do they care about?) Let the dead look after the dead.
Another Holocene Human
@mai naem mobile: Check out Church Folk Revolution. People are fighting back. Church people fighting back. Whether they succeed or fail, I doubt an outsider would have much impact on that process.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Another Holocene Human:
Believe it or not, I actually know people who worked closely with Steve Jobs. He may have had some narcissistic personality traits, but he definitely did not have NPD. He demonstrated in his life an ability to grow and change that is impossible for people with true NPD. I suspect he was more on the autism or ADHD spectrum, which can have similar-looking traits.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Another Holocene Human:
The people who are walking away need to have someplace to go, and the people still inside could be coaxed outside if they think it’s safe. If the conservative churches are collapsing, now is the time to figure out how to assist the people who still need it when their support network is gone.
And Elie is an RN, so you’re never going to be able to convince her to stop trying to help people. It’s what (good) nurses do.
Elie
@mai naem mobile:
I share your concern and agree with your strategy about women and younger folks… just like you say, how to do it…
Elie
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
LOL — you are right… Nancy Nurse do gooder (though even I have limits). I’m trying to help folks but also help ourselves because the outlook with these people doing what they do is pretty horrible…
Elie
@Another Holocene Human:
Well unfortunately, its going to take a while to clear these people out of influencing our government and politics. How long you willing to wait and how much destruction are you willing to put up with while you wait out the demographic shift?
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): One of the things the evangelical churches did was convince people that any competing institution that provided that kind of social capital was anti-Christian and bad.
Matt McIrvin
@sparrow: I think it’s just a really intuitively appealing idea that economic trouble happens because people aren’t working or producing enough, so declaring more holidays must be dangerous somehow. It’s a wrong, basically right-wing idea, but it makes sense on the surface, and the opposite doesn’t.
Captain C
@BGinCHI: I suspect that a lot of them are more the “let’s see what I can skim quickly”-type business men (a la the Mittster) rather than the “let me build something up that will last”-types (say, Carnegie, despite his flaws). Investment, for those people, is a cost to be avoided, not a way of increasing future profits.
Captain C
@scav: And if you’re really slick, the debt can be to another one of your companies. Win-win all around (if you ignore the externalities like the ruined lives of your employees).
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: I think the I Love Kim Davis voters came out in droves.
Paul in KY
@Cacti: I sure agree there. If you’re going to go down, go down as a Democrat, with guns blazing!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Matt McIrvin:
Since I was raised Catholic, not evangelical, Fred Clark’s Slacktivist blog has been really helpful in getting me to understand a lot of the underlying theology, even when it isn’t openly stated. In that philosophy, someone who comes to you with an offer of peace is always working for the devil. Only people who promise war are trustworthy. It’s fucked up, but it’s undeniably there. People who promise to try and fix things are not only untrustworthy, they have an evil hidden agenda that you need to figure out.
jonas
Well, as one trenchant observer once put it, the voters of Kentucky know what they want…and deserve to get it good and hard.