Have at it.
I’m watching season 3 of Better Call saul and I fucking hate Chuck with a passion. Almost as much as I love Kim.
Reader Interactions
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.
Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.
Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.
Cole is on a roll !
I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.
Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.
The choice is between normal and crazy.
Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.
It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.
Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.
Tick tock motherfuckers!
I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.
Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.
Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.
You can’t love your country only when you win.
People are weird.
You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.
… gradually, and then suddenly.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
White supremacy is terrorism.
TenguPhule
Two threads wasn’t enough? We needed a third?
Quinerly
@TenguPhule:
I think they are trying to separate all of us.
Adam L Silverman
Adam L Silverman
Adam L Silverman
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman:
MSNBC just calling SC.
trollhattan
It was a hell of a season (wrapped it up last night). The Mike-Gus relationship is probably my favorite aspect but Hector Salamanca is right up there. And yeah, Kim.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
R.I.P Chuck McGill
TenguPhule
@Quinerly: The calm, the panicked and the disinterested?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Dude.
Chuck is a reptile, but it’s a hell of a performance by Lenny.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Adam L Silverman:@Adam L Silverman: They may have lost but they were really close. Are these seats up in the midterms? They could be flipped
Quinerly
@TenguPhule:
The boring shelf liquor, the jazzed up freezer liquor, and the instant dumplings?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Bernie’s DNC Woulda Won SC
JanieM
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: All seats are up in the midterms. This isn’t the Senate. Or maybe I misunderstood your question.
BlueDWarrior
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: well everything is on the House side by default.
trollhattan
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
A. Maybe. B.Cole is gonna kick your butt.
ArchTeryx
Looks like another moral victory in GA-6. All that money Republicans dumped into the district apparently worked: Handel is up 52-48.
Looks like the AHCA is a done deal.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I still can’t believe Ossoff didn’t rent a place in the district he’s running in. I said that in another thread, but I feel like ranting here, too. How fucking hard is it not to give the other side an easy thing to hit you over the head with? I know his girlfriend is still in medical school, but, fuck, dude, you’re running for Congress. Rent a fucking apartment in the district. Really. Can we get some God damned Democrats who don’t do dumbass shit like this? Please?
Major Major Major Major
On the NYT live projection, Ossoff has about the same odds of wining as Trump did on election morning.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): “and he only moved here so he could run! He signed the lease FIVE MONTHS AGO!”
Another Scott
@ArchTeryx: Stop being a Debbie Downer.
They haven’t passed it yet in the Senate.
The bills aren’t identical so there has to be a conference, then the House and Senate have to vote yet again.
It’s not over. Don’t give up.
Cheers,
Scott.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@JanieM: No that was me being stupid. Still, I’m not really disappointed by these results. They just go to show we have a fighting chance, even in some red districts
Timurid
If they win this running the Kathy Bates character from Misery, I don’t even…
D58826
Well if this was horseshoes the D’s would be 4 for 4. On MSNBC the first read is that inspite of the supposed D enthusiasm, the early voting turn out for Ossoff was less than they had hoped for.
Culture of Truth
I actually think the whole Chuck electronic sensitivity storyline is a mistake. It’s just too weird and precious.
mai naem mobile
@Adam L Silverman: AJC has Handel up by about 5K with more votes in. Ugh. I told myself that Ossoff was going to lose so I wouldn’t be disappointed.
Also,the SC final will probaby have the Republican up by more because the GOP heavy area hadon’t reported before the AP called it. But,yes, maybe the Dems should have spent more money in SC instead of GA.
guachi
His campaign took in enough cash he could have bought ten houses to live in.
But yet again we get close but no cigar in yet another race.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): If he rented an apartment, the GOP would have said he was carpetbagging. One can’t make every move in politics out of the fear the that GOP will put a negative spin on it.
Iowa Old Lady
Moral victories are all well and good, but I’d like a real victory for a change, please.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
Damn. Damn. DAMN. The Parnell race in SC margin right now is 2000 votes. Just like the Dems lost Kansas by 8K votes.
Why, oh WHY is there not a Democratic National SWat TEam who swoops in with 5 days to go, with 20 young social-media whizzes and a perfect database, who organizes prec inct and block captains and GETS those extra 10k votes? I am so tired of moral victories. They don’t seat congresspersons.
And while i’m griping – how come nobody MADE OSSOF MOVE into his district, ferchrissake? Why hand the GOP a weapon? Why didn’t we have gutter attack ads of our OWN all ready to go, and run them, when the GOP launched theirs?
And why didn’t the national party make sure we had a really solid candidate running in Montana – not one who’s financial past became a huge issue?
– – sigh – – -as Will Rogers said, I don’t belong to any organized Political party – I’m a Democrat. But i am getting a little tired of our electoral incompetence.
Uncle Cosmo
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Oh FFS, if he’d rented an apartment in the district the fucking GOP would have bitched that he’d only done it for the election, whether or not it was true.
Let’s stop whining about bullshit talking points & start accepting that about half the electorate in this nation are fucking zombies who’ll vote for anyone with an (R). And start getting folks who support us registered & out to the polls.
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: Good thing, because otherwise this might have happened!
Quinerly
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I wasn’t as loud this AM as you are now about Ossoff’s living arrangement but it completely baffles me why he didn’t work out a way to live in the district. For dog’s sake…he couldn’t even fucking vote for himself.
mai naem mobile
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I agree. He could have fucking rented a goddamned room in a roomate situation if the money situation was that tight.
Major Major Major Major
Cohn has him back to ~25% odds.
ArchTeryx
@Another Scott: Why is this being a Debbie Downer? It’s been on the pundits’ keyboards for a long time that a loss in GA-6 may give a few Republican Senators cold feet, but a win would bolster them.
Besides, if the rumors are even half-true that Senate bill is going to be *even worse* then the House bill, all but defunding Medicaid completely. And McConnell is going to try to bypass any conference committee with a few parlimentary tricks to get it to Trump’s desk ASAP.
Losing GA-6, losing the ACA and losing Medicaid one-two-three within a week or so is going to be a monster body blow to the left. And McConnell damn well knows it. So does Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
you neo-liberals are gonna be in for a shock when Bernie resigns his Senate seat, rents a studio apartment in Fulton County, and beats Karen Handel by 120 points on a Real Progressive platform in 2018. Susan Sarandon’s gonna take that KS seat, Michael Moore will be our man in So Carolina, and Cornel West is moving to Montana, to open a dental floss farm, and (metaphorically, of course) bounce Greg Pianoforte around like a cheap reporter.
guachi
It looks like Ossof won’t get any closer than Clinton did in 2016. So it seems actual voters like Trump just fine (if you think this race was a referendum on Trump)
JanieM
Maybe someone linked this above, but in case not, 538 has the most recent totals I’ve seen.
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Yes, the people who won tonight will begun to campaign for reelection this summer for next years regularly scheduled mid term Congressional elections.
TenguPhule
@Another Scott:
1. McConnell, Calvinball.
2. McConnel & Paul Ryan. Calvinball.
3. Zero media attention to this whole process
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@guachi: so he outperformed the Dem who ran against Price by about 20 points?
And, just as Obama could never win a race when he wasn’t on the ballot, trump might not lose when he isn’t.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx:
I mean, both chambers still have to pass the same language.
Peale
@mai naem mobile: not really. The problem with the R+16 distracts in terms of GOTV is that there aren’t enough voters you can reach to GOTV. Like who do you call? How do you identify former GOP voters who are leaning? Turnout of your own base isn’t going to be enough. As for Ossoff, I think what we’re going to find out is that for all the money spent, no one actually changed their minds from the first round where he barely lost.
guachi
The Dem who ran against Price had no money. Look at the difference in that district with a candidate who did have money, Clinton.
Ossof had more money than any Congressional race in history.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
That was a historical norm that can no longer be relied on.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@guachi: Its too early to tell about what voters want. It’s one district in GA that been safely Republican for 20 years. Who knows what will happen between now and Nov 2018
ArchTeryx
@Major Major Major Major: And exactly who’s going to defect in the House from the first bill, when McConnell’s basically zeroes out Medicaid? The Teanuts are going to throw themselves another kegger. The moderates will vote lockstep with their leaders. I’d love to be proven wrong, but the moment the AHCA got out of the House, I figured its passage was foreordained, and so far I’ve not been in any way proven wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and was still outspent by 2.5: 1
ETA:
Republican for closer to forty, I guess “safely” is subjective.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: um. No. If they pass different language, then which one becomes the law, smartypants? They have to agree on the exact words.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This is what happens when the Neo-Liberals and the Debbie Wasserman Schultzs at the DNC try to ram a globalist down our throats.
Susan Sarandon was right when she said “Karen Handel is more likely to usher in the Revolution”.
D58826
@mai naem mobile: But they didn’t visit WI
OT. From NYT according to Rachel
1. Yates told the WH that Flynn was potentially compromised
2. Mike Pompeo was in the Oval Office when Der Fuhrer asked Dan Coates to talk to the FBI to drop the Flynn investigation
3. the CIA, Pompeo’s agency, was aware of the information that lead Yates to go to the WH
4. Pompeo did not brief Der Fuhrer on the CIA findings
5. For the 18 days between the Yates meeting and Flynn being fired, Pompeo continued to include Flynn in the POTUS daily brief.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/politics/mike-pompeo-cia.html?&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Quinerly
@Uncle Cosmo:
Ossoff should have done the very basics. MOVE TO THE DISTRICT. Honestly, I hadn’t paid much attention to his living arrangement until last night. He sounded like a frat boy who couldn’t live apart from his girlfriend in his explanation…”she’s in medical school and walks to her classes.” Couples are separated for many tough reasons…deployments, jobs, family issues. He should have made the effort to move 6 miles. Rant over.
Omnes Omnibus
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: It was Newt’s district. People (not you) need to get a grip.
mai naem mobile
@Peale: you’re right if you look at it that way. I was looking at the fact that the seat used to be John Spratt’s seat not that terribly long ago so it was winnable.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Uncle Cosmo: This doesn’t really answer the question, though. It’s a fucking Congressional district. Congressional districts have something like 700,000 people in them. I find it hard to believe that there weren’t any feasible candidates out of 700,000 living in the district. This is a dumb “issue” as I said above. But why hand the Republicans anything to beat you over the head with, however dumb? This kind of shit shouldn’t even be something anybody’s talking about. Yeah, there are always going to be mistakes and slipups, and things nobody could have foreseen. Can we at least not do the dumb things that are obvious beyond belief? Find somebody to run who lives in the district. This is like a baseball team hiring a manager who doesn’t know when to pinch hit, or that you try to get as many left handers into the line up when a right hander is pitching against you, or to keep them out when you’re playing against a left handed pitcher. Yeah, there are all kinds of other, subtler things a manager has to know, and any number of things that can go wrong in a game. But you kind of want your manager to know the easy shit like he was born knowing it. Same deal here.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx: that’s a different question than whether Mitch can somehow get it passed without at least one more House vote.
D58826
@TenguPhule: I know Der Fuhrer isn’t smart enough to have planned it this way but all of the shiney balls that Trump throws out there distract the media from these issues.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
The one that hurts people the most. They may have to create an unholy combination of the two versions in committee, but given how they’ve already broken every other rule so far, I do not expect them to have a second vote on it.
ArchTeryx
@Major Major Major Major: I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he found a way – there’s already plenty of rumor about ways he can do it – but even if he doesn’t, it’s a moot point. House voted for it once. They’ll vote for it again, probably within hours of the Senate bill passing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ArchTeryx: The turtle can either go to conference(and have both houses vote on the result), pass the House bill, or have the House pass the Senate bill. The bills have to be the same.
RinaX
The only thing that’s going to move voters in these types of districts, AND motivate more non-voters to vote for Dems is a disaster. And unfortunately, what Trump’s done so far isn’t nearly enough. If the AHCA changes hit hard before the midterms or the economy collapses, then we’ll have a chance.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: McConnell’s plan is to jam the House. Run his process to pass the bill, immediately send it to the House, then shut the Senate down for the summer vacation. This way the House has no choice but to take action on what the Senate did. It limits what Ryan and McCarthy can do in response.
D58826
@Major Major Major Major: Yes that is the way it has been done for 240 years. But all of that was in the pre-Yurtle. If Yurtle and ZEGS have to they will find a way to chuck that history out the window.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: you think Ryan’s gonna sign the piece of paper swearing that it’s the same as the one the House passed, even though it’s not, and send it to the president? That’s a great foundation for an enduring law that won’t be instantly challenged in court.
OGLiberal
Don’t know what the final outcome will be but a loss is a loss. Moral victories, “we almost did it”, don’t mean shit in politics, sports, or anything. Let’s face it – a lot of white folks in this country loves them some Trump and Republicans, even after months of showing how atrocious he is, even after the GOP has offered nothing but a shit sandwich in terms of legislation. Of course, the rich folks in GA-6 will have nothing to worry about if the ACA is gutted so as long as they can keep more of the money they’ll never spend rather than giving a small portion of it to poor people for healthcare, they’ll stomach the embarrassment of Trump and the Ryan/McConnell GOP. And the poor white folks in GA-6 – probably aren’t many – just hate brown people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Quinerly: it did occur to me he/they might not be able to afford an apartment, and it wasn’t a time to get hinky with money. But I felt the same way since I heard he didn’t live in the district.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
I never said they were geniuses, just evil bastards.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: The doom-sayers are out in force tonight.
Quinerly
@reality-based (the original, not the troll):
Ossoff said last night that he didn’t move to the district because he lived with his girlfriend and she walks to her medical school classes. One of the most ridiculous things I have heard. And, yes, I was mad last night about it and still am. Just stupid.
ArchTeryx
@Adam L Silverman: And I fully expect a House vote literally within hours of the Senate vote. They aren’t going to let that bill be out in the public eye one second more then they have to, so by the time the media even notices a bill purging millions of poor, disabled and elderly Americans is in the public eye, it’s a fiat accompli.
And everybody goes home to their deathday parties.
Adam L Silverman
@Quinerly: He could have just moved back in with his folks for the campaign with the statement that as soon as his fiance graduated they would go house shopping together in the district.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: see, that’s a good example of something he could do! Which is not weird Calvinball machinations that somehow reconcile two disparate bills into one without an additional vote, it’s just normal being an asshole strongarming. I’m arguing against a specific assertion TP keeps making.
Iowa Old Lady
@RinaX: I would guess the AHCA is designed so the most painful parts don’t hit until after at least 2018.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: Predicting evil bastard rule breaking is easy after seeing the evil bastards break the rules.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
since I’m always looking for the bright side, Price might well be indicted by 2018!
Another Scott
@ArchTeryx: It’s being a Debbie Downer because you’re taking the results of this race as being some sort of proof of what is going to happen, when you know it has almost nothing to do with what happens.
1) McConnell is writing his bill in secret – nobody know’s what’s in it. Yes, it will be horrible, but we don’t know who will vote for it. We know the CBO scoring will be horrible. We know there are statements today that ~ 7 GOP senators won’t support it.
2) We know that the AHCA barely passed the House, with the promise that a few $B for high-risk pools was enough to switch some votes. McConnell’s bill is supposed to be worse. Will those Teabaggers in the House vote for it? We don’t know.
3) If you take the view that the GOP always does what their leadership says, then these races in SC and GA don’t matter anyway.
4) We know the House hates the Senate and vice versa. They both want to determine what the final legislation is, and there are substantial differences in the (rumored) provisions.
5) They only have a week or two to pass something due to the Reconciliation timeline and their desire to move on to destroying the tax code. There are various procedural things that Schumer and the Democrats are doing in the Senate to slow the process down.
In short, the AHCA and similar efforts to gut the PPACA and Medicaid have not passed yet. There are lots of ways that they might still fail. They’ve failed lots of ways already (e.g. the FY17 budget).
Screaming doom and gloom isn’t helpful.
This is a long battle and we need to keep our wits about us. If Team D loses tonight, that doesn’t mean the battle was for naught. One battle isn’t going to give the Teabaggers their final victory, and one battle isn’t going to reverse Trumpism. It’s a long fight.
Hang in there.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: And then you’ll get your blood in the streets, right?
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus: I can also safely predict that other issues are going to suck up all the attention away from the ACHA.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott:
Thank you for this.
ArchTeryx
Do notice nowhere do I say “give up”. But accept that this particular fight is over, we lost it the moment Trump was inaugurated, and at this point all we can really do is start planning to mitigate the damage as best we can. It’ll be a hell of a rallying cry – but there’ll be fewer Democratic voters the very next election after this gets put into place.
mai naem mobile
@ArchTeryx: i don’t mean to be rude but you are incredibly negative. I’ve read your comments and I am really glad you got a job and have insurance. I get my health insurance through the exchange so trust me, I totally get why it’s important to you. Be glad you have insurance and chances are if you lose your job you’ll have a while on unemployment and medicaid. I know it’s not optimal but just be glad you have your healthcare taken care of for a while.
Quinerly
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes, yes, and yes. I don’t think the not living there made people vote for her but as I said in an earlier thread I could see some people not making the effort to vote for him because he didn’t even make the effort to be able to VOTE FOR HIMSELF
TenguPhule
@Another Scott:
And we know those promises aren’t worth the electrons they’re written on.
Do we? Party before country with these bastards.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: They are out throughout the day and night, everyday, all week.
Peale
@Adam L Silverman: yep. How was he going to move to D.C. If he couldn’t be ten miles from his girlfriend for the length of his campaign?
Adam L Silverman
@?BillinGlendaleCA: His plan is to jam the House and force them to pass the Senate bill. No changes. No conference, no reconciliation committee and process.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: thank you for this, especially point three.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: OMG, we’re all gonna die!
D58826
Rachel is also talking about a mobster who was convicted of a pump and dump scheme. He didn’t go to jail because he was being used by the FBI as a mole in the mob. And while he was out of jail guess who he did 3 real estate deal with. Yes surprise surprise Der Fuhrer. It also seems that a RICO law suit is about to move forward. Bloomberg news is reporting that the financing in the deals under RICO investigation came from – wait for it Russian money close to Putin.
Again what is so fascinating and frustrating is that it was common knowledge in NY RE circles that Trump was mobbed up. Surely someone in the media capital of the world must have noticed this. But it was no near as interesting as those shrill e-mails.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
IIRC, the ‘Baggers first big victory was Scott Brown. Warren holds that seat now. Christie was a big T-Bag victory; he won reelection by embracing Barack Obama, barely escaped (so far!) indictment (come on, Port Authority investigation! We’ll give you Cuomo!) and is the least popular governor in the country.
D58826
@Adam L Silverman: Move a cot into an empty office in his campaign headquarters and sleep there one or two nights a week.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
i was typing the same thing when you were – see comment below. and yes “Grew up here, moved back 5 months ago IS a lot stronger than “can’t even be bothered to live in the district. ” Why had your opponent a cudgel to beat you with/
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Are any of you old enough to remember the special election in 2005 btwn Paul Hackett and Mean Jean Schmitt?
It was a heavy republican district held by Rob Portman. Dubya appointed Portman to a WH position, opening up a special election in the summer.
A very, very safe seat turned into a tight race:
In the end they held on to their heavy republican district 51-48
Just sayin — you may not ultimately win heavy red districts, but if you come close it means you can win purple districts later on.
That said: Bernie Woulda Won
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I know the House has been referred to as the Chamber of People’s Deputies(Billmon, I think), but they passed it by very close vote(though there could be some wiggle room with the leadership giving some members a pass).
TenguPhule
@Adam L Silverman:
I like my evil McConnell plan better.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Omnes Omnibus:
Doug R
@ArchTeryx: Went from +20 to less than +3. Not a loss.
Steve in the ATL
Ossoff’s living situation had zero impact on this race. The republican sleaze machine always finds something to attack and, if nothing is there, makes shit up (whitewater, Benghazi, emails, murders, child pr0n rings).
The bottom line is that this country is full of shitty people, and they hold the vast majority of political power from sea to shining sea.
This isn’t horseshoes or hand grenades, but hopefully when every house seat is on the line next year, the good guys will win a bunch they haven’t been competitive in before, in districts that aren’t as deep red as those in GA and SC.
Major Major Major Major
We are now in “stranger things have happened” territory for an Ossoff victory.
D58826
2/3rds of the vote counted -Handel 52% and Ossoff 48% and most of the uncounted vote is in Handel territory. The democrats continue to be the best near miss party in the world. ZEGS and Yertle must be smiling as they plan the final push to destroy Obamacare.
If after 5 months of Der Fuhrer and the horror of Trumpcare can’t get people enough people out to vote for a D, even as a protest vote, then I have no idea what they can do to craft a winning message. I realize in a nation election in 2018 tyhey need more than just a protest vote. But given the interest in this one district in which a large number of college educated middle class voters and you still can’t flip it then you have a real problem
OGLiberal
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I think the carpetbagger argument is not the issue. Ossoff is from Atlanta, which is like five minutes from the district. He’s hardly an “outsider”, geographically speaking. In Montana, the Democratic candidate in the special election – a bolo tie, cowboy hat wearing folk singer born and raised in Montana, who went to college in Montana – lost to a dickhead thug tech guy from New Jersey. The problem is white people outside of the Northeast, Virginia, Chicago, Colorado and the West Coast – they’re all selfish and often racist assholes. Yes, I know some good ones live outside of those areas but not enough – and some bad ones live inside those areas. But geography is a bitch for Dems. And often in that bad geography, it’s much harder to vote if you aren’t white.
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: Word. His living situation is the emailz of this race. As I said this morning, Rs always find a stick to beat the Dem candidate with and our mediabots follow their cue.
Adam L Silverman
@ArchTeryx: Depends. The House’s rules are both more and less flexible than the Senates. Something like this would have to go through the Rules Committee. That won’t happen in hours as the House is trying to get out the door for the same vacation and campaigning break.
Quinerly
@reality-based (the original, not the troll):
You would have thought he and his girlfriend would have WANTED to vote for him. But they couldn’t. They live 6 miles outside of the district and she needs to be able to walk to her classes. I’ll speak in these terms…political malpractice that he didn’t make the effort and COMMITMENT to move. Hopefully, my final rant.
ArchTeryx
@mai naem mobile: Which is why I am so negative. I got onto a lifeboat but the ship’s still going down. Maybe it’s survivor’s guilt, or the nightmare of watching everything go back to the way it was when I nearly died – twice! – because of lack of or piss-poor insurance coverage. I never WANTED this to happen, but I’m in fully fatalistic mode now. It’s gonna happen. Only question is how to reduce the casualty count as best as we can once this fully hits in 2018, 2020 or whatever they end up with.
(((CassandraLeo)))
If Ossoff had rented an apartment he’d be called a carpetbagger. This is all entirely irrespective of the fact that he grew up in the district and was only removed from it by a gerrymander.
The Republicans will always find some dumb bullshit to attack. It’s what they do.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: as I said this morning, we would’ve won in 2004 if Kerry hadn’t been stupid enough to be a decorated war hero.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Tracking. To be honest, the Senate jamming the House is pretty much SOP over the past 2 centuries.
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
He gave them the stick. He couldn’t even vote for himself. How ridiculous is that?
Mnemosyne
So, to be clear, the Republicans spent $12 million to barely win a district that went for Trump by 20 points six months ago?
Quinerly
@Major Major Major Major:
And goofy looking, elitist wind surfer.?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@OGLiberal: I know it maybe isn’t the issue, but Republicans have been trying to make a big deal of it. How hard is it to find people who doesn’t give them easy excuses to hit them for stupid shit? We shouldn’t even have to be talking about this, for fuck’s sake. I don’t see any excuse for this. It’s malpractice.
hovercraft
@Peale:
Where the hell have you been? Congresscritters stopped moving to DC after the Newt revolution, that’s why the need so much time in their districts. The way to prevent them from being corrupted by Washington or going native, is to not move the family to DC, just commute there. So he would have been like all the rest of them who spend every weekend at home. Since they are technically going home to spend time with their constituents, you have the privilege of paying for the travel. Yay!!
Adam L Silverman
@D58826: Felix Sater.
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: They would have found something else or made up something like the birther nonsense.
D58826
@Steve in the ATL:
I have a herd of pink unicorns I’m trying to sell. Interested:-)
Lets get real here. Sam Brownbeck destroyed the Kansas economy and was reelected. Scott Walker screwed the public employees in WI and survived a recall election. He then pushed right to work to destroy the unions and was still reelected.
In short the voters are getting what they wanted and deserve because they voted for these bums
Adam L Silverman
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mnemosyne: I thought it was well over $12 million. IIRC the total cost of the race was well over $50 million and Handel outspent Ossoff by over 2 to 1. Don’t have links right now though.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): The issue is that the Republicans will always find dumb bullshit to attack for every candidate we can find. It’s what they do. The least we can do is not lend further legitimacy to their attacks by reiterating them.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott:
Mnemosyne
@Quinerly:
Meh. It’s more likely that the shooting in DC got the white folks all riled up.
Plus it’s not like this race happened in a vacuum. It was do-or-die for the Republicans, too, and they barely squeaked out a win against a political novice in Newt Gingrich’s district.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: you don’t say?
the horror of trump care is still theoretical, and this is a district where Gorsuch is probably as popular as tax cuts
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
Predicted it always – Handel by 3 to 5, based on the ashholishness of the Republican base. They need conservative economics and fuckups up the ass good and hard.
Give them Granny, living in their house and ruining their personal lives and financial futures in a bed in the living room before they ever understand.
Fuck them. I’ll take my tax cuts now – it will help me personally, and when the teabigots finally understand, it will be my retirement time. Hopefully, people will recognize what a piece of lying shit the whole legend of Jesus(spit) of Nazareth was.
Mnemosyne
@(((CassandraLeo))):
You’re probably right — I haven’t seen the latest numbers.
So we forced the Republicans to spend tens of millions of dollars in order to barely win Newt Gingrich’s House seat. Seriously, think about that for a minute, people.
D58826
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. And he is still part of the Trump orbit. But e-mails
JMG
You know, if Ossoff had won 51-49 it would have had zero effect on what Senate Republicans are going to do. Zero. One rule of politicians is that they don’t care about their colleagues’ elections, just their own. I’d be happier if he won, and this comment thread would be a lot happier, but the danger to America’s health would be the same. Nobody knew who Ossoff was in February and he ran a damn good race in a very Republican district. I look at it this way. If there had been a special election in my district, Mass. – 7 and the Republican had lost by four, nobody here would be cheering a famous victory. We’d be scared shitless. This is the flip side of that.
Adam L Silverman
Another Scott
@Quinerly: I hope it’s nearly out of your system now. ;-)
As s_c and M^4 point out above, it doesn’t matter what the Democratic candidate’s life story is, the GOP will attack whether there’s something there or not.
Jon did a great job. Obama didn’t win his first race for Congress, either. (Bobby Rush crushed him.) Jon will be a formidable candidate next time, and next time might be sooner than we imagine.
Hang in there. Don’t get discouraged. We need (all of) you for the battles ahead.
Cheers,
Scott.
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m sorry. Beating this to death but as I said this AM…dyed in the wool Dem who would vote for a rabid raccoon with a D behind his name…but the not making the effort to move bugged me, though. Final time I say it…he couldn’t even vote for himself. I’m angry, frustrated…and maybe looking for a whipping boy. Dems should be able to do better.
D58826
@Adam L Silverman: Given GA-06 those ‘no’s will very quickly fall in line.
Listening to Rachel and Lawrence try to find a silver lining. And maybe it is there but it never seems to show up at the polls. Another network has called it for Handel
Steve in the ATL
@Quinerly: @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): chillax. Imho as a resident of this district since 1999, his living situation was irrelevant and it’s superfuckinghard to get any D to run in this district. Ossoff was the best I’ve ever seen here. His campaign was the first that ever contacted me, and they were seriously on top of that. Arguably over the top, but at least they did something.
If D candidates across the country fight like this unknown kid did to turn an R+20 district into R+3, then the white hats are going to flip some seats next year.
We desperately need to fight voter suppression, gerrymandering, Russian hacking, republican lies, and lackluster turnout, but we have made demonstrable progress in these last few races.
OGLiberal
@Doug R: It is a loss. Ossoff is losing and will probably lose. That’s a loss. Clinton won the popular vote but we’re stuck with spoiled short attention span temper tantrum as president. That was a loss, also. Doesn’t matter how many people in this country agree with us if they don’t vote enough to kick out the jerks who now run this country.
This isn’t being a Debbie Downer, this is reality. Clinton almost won the district, Trump is a disaster, Handel is terrible, and Osoff will lose by more than Clinton did. This is in no way a victory, not moral, not anything else. It just sucks. If, in the face of the disaster that is the Trump/Ryan/McConnell triumvirate, the Dems still can’t win a district that almost flipped to Clinton with a local candidate (Handel is not from Georgia – she’s a DC gal) who was seemingly pretty good and not anywhere near too far left…what the eff is going on? How do we change this? – have already said up-thread that I don’t know. But the Dems pay a bunch of people a lot of money to figure out how to do that…maybe we need better people? Or will no amount of money and experience change the fact that the majority of white people who vote in this country are assholes?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Fucking aye.
Mnemosyne
@Doug R:
Yep. While we’re wringing our hands about a close loss, Republican strategists are freaking the fuck out that a heavily gerrymandered Republican district could swing –17 in just over six months.
I should have bought stock in Maalox.
@D58826:
As others have said, nothing particularly bad has happened yet, particularly to white suburbanites. There’s a lot of stuff that could be bad for them, but the reality cluebat has not yet visited most of their homes.
And even so, what was supposed to be a safe Republican district turned into a nail-biter.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@JMG: I agree. Republicans always fall in line. It wouldn’t bother them in the least. I think the fact that these races have been so much more competitive than expected is actually very encouraging for next year
SiubhanDuinne
@Quinerly:
I know where you’re coming from, but honestly? If he and his girlfriend had moved to the 6th, the Republicans would have labeled them as “carpetbaggers” so fast it would make your head spin.
This is a district in which Democrats can’t win for losing.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: According to the talking head on MSNBC the GOP voters were just as enthusiastic and the D’s. Ossoff only won the early vote by 1% and the R’s turned out in droves in the same day voting
Republicans to spend tens of millions of dollars
Quinerly
Handel is a despicable deplorable.
Adam L Silverman
@D58826:
Mnemosyne
@OGLiberal:
Do you have a link for this claim? Last I saw, the district went heavily for Trump and the last Republican won by 20 points.
SiubhanDuinne
@Doug R:
Right you are.
And no net change in the overall delegation. We’re no worse off with Handel, in terms of Congressional votes, than we were with Price. Doesn’t change the overall numbers one whit.
Doesn’t mean I like it, but it’s not like it flipped from D to R, which would indeed have been painful.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@D58826:
Who said this? The talking head on MSNBC?
D58826
@Mnemosyne: GOP analyst Steve Schmidt is calling it an ominous win for the GOP. We will see
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This is a partisan Republican +9 district (ie R+9). On the other side of the ledger, there are ten D+9 districts. You how many D+9 districts are held by republicans? Answer: Ø (photo)
We like to romanticize elections, but in realty it’s practically impossible to win heavily partisan districts.
Aleta
Orcas in the Bering Straight are using boats to fish. (If they end up limiting human overfishing so the stocks can recover that would be cool.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5panVo_3oVQ
Sperm whale removing fish from longline
Quinerly
@SiubhanDuinne:
And Karen Handel now has a seat in Congress for as long as she wants it. Mark my words.
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
Um, yeah, the Republicans were enthusiastic. They hate our guts. Is that really a surprise to you at this point?
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: Thanks for the report. That’s exactly my thinking.
Being a Manic Progressive is exhilarating, but it’s exhausting too. We need to pace ourselves and keep fighting.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@OGLiberal: The fact that we are gaining on them where they are traditionally strong isn’t a good thing? Okay… I am tired of people looking for the worst possible interpretations of things.
Juju
@Quinerly: I agree. She’s an awful human being, but it seems the house, and senate, for that matter, are full of awful human beings.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@D58826: How credible is he?
Adam L Silverman
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Yes. Steve Kornacki who is their numbers guy.
FlipYrWhig
The thing I find hard to comprehend is that the SC election might come out to be closer than the GA one was.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: every report I have seen is Trump won by 2% and Price by 20% or so. That is why the D’s were hopeful. Listening to another analyst on MSNBC that the voters were not really enthused about either candidate and it was a referendum on Trump. And at this point at least one district is willing to put their votes where their mouths are and it is 52-48 in favor of Trump.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Mnemosyne: IIRC, OGL is correct; Trump didn’t win the district by much, but Price did. However, most previous GOP presidential candidates over the past few decades had won it by two-digit margins, IIRC.
From what I’ve been able to ascertain, Ossoff chose not to make this race about Trump as much as he could have. The hot takes will probably come in blaming him for doing this, and it’s easy to second-guess that strategy now. It’s virtually impossible to know in retrospect whether trying to tie Handel to Trump would’ve helped, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
Too late to edit. When I said “This is a district in which Democrats can’t win for losing.” I now realize this is really misleading and defeatist and negative-sounding. I meant that fine old Southern line only in terms of the rhetoric — that no matter what choice Ossoff made, he’d be hammered mercilessly by Handel and the Repubs. Did not in ANY sense intend to convey that Democrats cannot win elections.. I think they can, I think they will, and I think it’ll happen sooner than anyone may think.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Quinerly: She didn’t win by that much, did she? Too lazy to look at vote totals. The economy could be in the shitter this time next year. Who knows what could happen, especially with a heavily damaged and delegimized Trump Admin being a huge anchor on them
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott: after I typed that comment, I (truly) thought to myself, “I’m channeling Another Scott….”
Mnemosyne
@D58826:
“Ominous” how?
Also, since he’s already on the ground there, I hope that Jason Kander from Let America Vote is gathering stories of people whose vote was suppressed. We need a lot more of those, because there are way too many people who disbelieve that American citizens are being stopped from voting.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OGLiberal: Guess we should just give up and shut the party down.
OGLiberal
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Maybe it would have been better if he lived in the district but he’s from Atlanta and his opponent was born, raised and live for a long time in DC/Maryland. If Dems can’t play up the Georgia boy angle, regardless of his mailing address, then they – the party, not rank and file voters – are just pathetic. Why not paint Handel as the outsider, a person who couldn’t even earn a bachelor’s degree v. a local dude with a Georgetown degree (this is rich Atlanta suburbs – no risk in offending folks who may just have a high school education)? A woman who tried to end Komen grants to Planned Parenthood, probably something the rich white folks of GA-6 weren’t crazy about because rich folks often try to act like they “care”. She freaking opposes adoption by gay couples…at least that’s what Wikipedia told me. Isn’t this the crazy conservative that educated, wealthier white folks are supposed to not like? My guess is that the wealthier, white “I’m caring and tolerant” act is all bullshit when put up against getting or not getting a tax cut so they can have more money than they or their heirs will ever spend.
Major Major Major Major
@OGLiberal:
No. We just need to outvote them with our own more-numerous people.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@D58826: A heavily GOP district that has been in R hands for 20 some years. I don’t think this by itself really means a thing
Mnemosyne
@OGLiberal:
My guess is that the rich racist whites in the district didn’t like that Ossoff is a protégé of John Lewis, but they’ll dress it up in fancier language.
Tazj
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: I’m old enough to remember that race but I don’t. Armando the editor at Daily Kos brought up that race today and it gives me hope for 2018.
I know that it’s really frustrating not to have a win in any special elections, especially with such horrible R candidates and the current president. I can’t stand the sight or sound of Steve Kornacki anymore because of recent election results and I’ll probably take a break from the MSM radio and TV for a week. However, I have to keep the faith that this is going to turn around soon.
D58826
@Aleta: There was a video of two adult elephants jumping into the zoo pool to save a drowning baby elephant. They had figured out that they had to push the baby to the shallow end. The baby was fine. The video didn’t say but I suspect one of the adults was the Mom and the other a Grandmother or Aunt.
Turns out the animal world is pretty smart. A lot smarter than the human world in the US. There was a cartoon of the familar ascent of man from ape to human. The last image was Trump and the one before that had turned around and was say ‘go back go back’
eclare
@Another Scott: I am calling tomorrow and I am in fucking red state TN. I know it’s uphill, but what the hell else am I supposed to do? They want me to give up, so I refuse.
FlipYrWhig
@OGLiberal: The Republicans are a party driven by spite and resentment. They voted for Handel to spite the liberals who wanted Ossoff to win and got excited about it.
goblue72
@guachi: @Steve in the ATL: Problem is, there aren’t enough marginal districts to provide Dems with a majority in the House. The gerrymandering has set up a situation where Dems need to either (a) get leaners to switch sides or (b) get people who historically don’t vote to instead register and vote.
Both are very hard for Democrats as currently situated. There’s only so much “GOTV” that you can do to swing the needle. At a certain point, you run out of “your” voters to GOTV. And as for money, at a certain point you hit diminishing returns.
Parties are about assembling voter coalitions constructed to provide a winning majority of votes. The Democratic Party has constructed a voter coalition that doesn’t deliver enough votes. The best it has accomplished since 1996 – which is the year Democrats started losing across the board – is a control of Congress for a mere two cycles (2006 and 2008) due to voter blowback over “Great Depression 2.0 + Iraq War” – and a coalition that delivered the White House for two Presidential cycles (2008 & 2012)
Our voter coalition – which is essentially “racial minorities + youth (under 30s) + urban residents” (all social classes) doesn’t have enough voters in it. We used to have “non-urban white working class (mostly Northern)” and “Southern whites” in it. First to bleed off were Southern whites post-Civil Rights Era. Good riddance. But the Party still held onto non-urban white working class voters for awhile, which helped maintain House districts throughout the Midwest, as well as suburban districts in the Northeast. Then we started losing those. We still held enough of those voters to assist with Presidential elections, till Trump.
So far, the DNC seems to be fooling itself that it can replace those voters entirely with middle management suburban whites. Despite the fact that those voters, from a social class & cultural perspective line up right down the center of your core Republican voter.
centerfielddj
@Another Scott: Thank you for this, Scott. Yes, some damn perspective is in order.
Steve in the ATL
@OGLiberal:
Bingo
Steve in the ATL
@goblue72: so what course of action do you recommend?
FlipYrWhig
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Of course I remember. And as I recall crashing-the-gate-darling Paul Hackett was later deprived of his birthright by the neoliberal sellout Sherrod Brown.
janelle
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: 40 years. I don’t know why they keep saying 20. It’s Newt Gingrich’s district, and he held the seat from 1979-1999. The last time a Democrat won that district was 1976 (John Flynt, Gingrich’s immediate predecessor).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: DWIGHT!
Who the fuck is “we”, Dwight?
Like Rob Quist? He was quirky! and Bernie held big rallies! So he won, right, Dwight?
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Until 1980, to be exact. Are you now going to try and pretend that Reagan Democrats didn’t leave the Democratic Party until 2016?
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Steve in the ATL: Posting on blogs telling the DNCucks they’re doing it wrong?
Quinerly
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: So hoping for the economy to be in the shitter in a few months is supposed to make me feel better? Thanks, but no thanks.
FlipYrWhig
@Steve in the ATL: Try harder to appeal to racists and xenophobes, oops, I mean “economic anxiety.”
glory b
@OGLiberal: Yes, as your fellow commenters of color could tell you, a lot of the white people in this country are assholes. Why are you on the fools errand to get their votes?
A few weeks ago, I posted a comment noting that you guys say that the Dems must have the perfect candidate with the perfect message who has lived a perfect life, otherwise they will vote for any mouth-breathing republican or willfuly ignore their own interests and stay home.
So, let’s concentrate on getting out the votes of people of color. They are alraedy on board, but can’t get ID or get to the polls etc.
Donate to vote riders.
D58826
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: @Mnemosyne: @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Schmidt ran the McCain campaign in 08 and is a long time GOP operative. Like former GOP RNC chair Michael Steele he is a partisan but not a rabid one. He will criticize the home team. On the other hand he did push McCain to put the sage of Wasilla on the ticket.
The ‘ominous’ phrase was his. Basically that the GOP House members will be facing an unusually strong head wind in 2018. The out of power party usually picks up seats in that first off-year election so you would expect the D’s to pick up some seats. There are 23 districts held by an R but that went for Hillary in 2016. If the D’s can sweep them all, they only need to win two more seats to put Nancy back in the speakers chair.
Major Major Major Major
Well, I’m outta here, you kids have fun.
JMG
People, you do all understand this election wasn’t created by random chance, right? Nor were any of the other ones. They were all held by conservative Republicans who joined Trump’s administration. They weren’t fair fights, To expect Trump voters to say five months into his tenure that “wow, I sure made a big mistake” is to deny human nature. No Democrat has been elected in the district for almost 40 years.
Another fact. After tonight, the last 23 special elections, going back to 2012, have been won by the party of the previous incumbent, Republican or Democrat. Seeing the wild swings in elections in that time, this suggests specials are not special messengers from the future.
OGLiberal
@Juju: Per 538, Clinton lost the district by 1.5 points, a district Obama lost by 23 in 2012. It’s true that Tom Price won by 23 but he was the incumbent who lived in GA since his residency Handel was a wackadoodle from DC.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-georgia-6-special-election/
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
Remember, boys and girls, the fact that Democrats started losing state houses and House seats in 2010 is just a coincidence! Nothing to see here, just move along and only think about what the Democrats did wrong.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See, when Bernie’s guy loses it’s because other people didn’t help enough, but when The Establishment loses, it’s because they didn’t try hard enough. The bottom line is, it’s someone else’s fault, probably neoliberals.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@goblue72:
Please. please tell me that IRL you are working for the national Dem party. That’s the most trenchant – and, i suspect, accurate – analysis I have seen in a long time for why Dems lose elections.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Georgia 6th District
2002: R win by 59%
2004: R win by 100%
2006: R win by 45%
2008: R win by 37%
2010: R win by 99%
2012: R win by 29%
2014: R win by 32%
2016: R win by 24%
2017: R win by 04%
The math tells me a 20 point shift wasn’t good for gop fortunes.
I mean, how is it that Corbyn exceeding expectation, but not an outright win is great, but Ossoff exceeding historical partisan results, but not an outright win is bad.
weaselone
@goblue72:
You going to purity pony this thread? Let me ask you a small question. Ossoff looks to be on course to lose by a bit less then 3% due to a sizable blowout in same day voting. Do you think that maybe your fellow Bernie bro carrying out his own armed revolution in Alexandria might have had something to do with that outcome?
Aleta
If I understand it, we need 3 or so Republicans to become worried enough about midterms or 2020 to insist on funding PP (so the House bill dies if the House won’t budge). Or to just refuse TrumpDontCare. A close loss may still have that effect.
FlipYrWhig
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): For fuck’s sake, the guy is a preening moron who’s wrong about everything, why are you encouraging him?
Omnes Omnibus
@glory b: This.. All of this.
OGLiberal
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No, just get better people who are paid to help win the Democrats winnable elections like this one. Outside of Obama’s campaign folks and maybe a select few state level folks, our paid folks seem to be just horrible. And yes, this matters almost as much as voters – because people who are good at it – see Obama campaign, 2008, 2012 – get people out to vote, both overall and in the places that matter. (I will admit that the Obama folks didn’t do much on the Congressional/State race front but there have to be people who can do that better than the people who are currently failing at that job)
Keith P.
I’m glad Howard Hamlin is finally getting his due. Him finally giving up on Chuck and heaving him out the door was great.
Mnemosyne
@reality-based (the original, not the troll):
Dwight works in a high-rise in Sacramento and lives in a million-dollar house in San Francisco. The odds that he has his finger on the pulse of the white working class are … not high.
FlipYrWhig
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Because Corbyn has a beard and thus is always #1 in the hearts of frustrated hipsters, grad students, and aging hippies.
janelle
@goblue72: Georgia-06 has a Cook PVI value of R+8. There are currently 52 congressional districts held by Republicans with a partisan index of R+5 or less. 71 Republican-held CDs with a PVI of R+7 or less. If the Democrats were to only pick off every GOP-held district with a Cook PVI of R+3 or less, they would retake the House and hold a 15 seat majority.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Quinerly: I just meant that a lot can happen in a year. The future isn’t written in stone, as someone here told me. And it’s not so much a hope but a near certainty, especially with these morons in charge. They don’t really know what the hell they’re doing. Why do you think the Senate bill is being written in Secret? It’s bad, not just because they want tax cuts, but because they don’t have any good ideas for healthcare.
The GOP doesn’t win because they have good policies or a good message;they win because they explot people’s bigotries, suppressing voters, controlling the media narrative, and flooding candidates with lots of dark money. That’s pretty much it. We have to protect our voters at all costs and get new ones registered and run candidates for every office.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: But his friends are half his age and totally cool!
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@FlipYrWhig: ok -SOUNDED reasonable – didn’t know he was a Bernie bro (those guys are dead to me)
In fact, when the news of the Alexandra shooting broke, my first thought was “leave it to a Sanders supporter to something so spectacularly unhelpful!”
Mnemosyne
@OGLiberal:
I would be very curious to know what the undervote and third-party vote numbers were for that district in 2016. I don’t really picture too many Republicans in that district voting for both Hillary and Price, but I could picture them withholding their votes or voting for Johnson instead, thus artificially inflating Hillary’s numbers.
D58826
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
That shift is what generated Schmidt’s ‘ominous win’ comment. Lawrence has also been beating the 20 point shift. Basically he is saying that any R who won in 2016 with less than 20% should be nervous tonight and that includes the 23 districts that went D for POTUS and R for the House..
The D’s have 18 months to build on the 4 near misses in districts that under ordinary circumstances are winnable. These 4 would have been tough under any circumstances. Given the natural order of things Ossoff, if he had won, might well have been a one hit wonder and would lose in 2018. My hope was that a win tonight would have given 3 of those supposed 7 leaning NO votes on Trumpcare the backbone to become firm No’s and tell Yertle to pound sand. They still might but it will be a lot harder.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: he’s a grassroots organizing gentrifier who’s totally the man with all the homeless peeps in his ‘hood, totes stands up to the cops when The Man comes around to hassle them.
But then… we don’t want to get Dwight started on what he thinks of police officers. Surprised he’s still here, frankly.
Another Scott
@D58826: It’s kinda weird that click-bait videos like that seem to show up most prominently in the Daily Mail and similar rags in the UK.
Cheers,
Scott.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@OGLiberal:
Hear, hear!
dnfree
I find the Washington Post’s new 202 newsletters to be very informative. Here they are quoting one Georgia voter.
“Donald Trump was not my first choice, but I went with him because he knows what he’s doing, and he’s a successful businessman,” Jamieson explained as she dipped a pita chip into hummus at Marlow’s Tavern in Johns Creek during a date with her boyfriend. “I don’t think he’s always making the best choices, but at the same time he’s done more in his first 100 days than any president ever before.”
I asked what specifically Jamieson was thinking of when she said that. “Just research it,” she said. “I’m not going to get into it, but it’s the truth. It’s factual. Just look it up.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OGLiberal: Obama had some smart, talented people working for him, it’s true. And they had Obama as a candidate.
Ohio Mom
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: That’s my district! We are quite gerrymandered, as is all of the Buckeye state, for both the state legislative districts and Congressional ones. Nowadays our Congressional Rep is the odious Brad Wenstrup.
I’d forgotten all about Paul Hackett but now that you’ve refreshed my memory, I have a vague recollection that he had a fatal flaw that came out later.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig: Shorter GoBlue, “Boomers suck!”.
FlipYrWhig
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): His history is of strutting faux radicalism punctuated by outbursts about how much money he makes. My reaction to anything he says about class are a mite colored by that.
D58826
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: @David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Different election system for one. And in this particular election it resulted in a hung Parliament in which neither party had the majority they needed to form a government. May will probably remain PM because she has formed a coalition with a party from N. Ireland (The UK Independence Party is a Eurosceptic and right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom) that makes the KKK look like good neighbors. If Ossoff had won it would not have changed the balance of power in the House oven though it would have sent a strong symbolic message.
efgoldman
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
ALL house seats are up in midterms. If you’re commenting here you should know that – it’s sixth-grade civics.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@Mnemosyne: well, ok – the argument seemed valid to me – but i accept that I am depressed and clutching at straws here.
I moved back fro Silicon Valley to North Dakota 10 years – so I am trapped here in deepest Trumpistan, Fox news viewers to their core. and I can’t see a way to make Middle America smart again. or even sensible.
I just wish the national Dems had sent a team into SC and Kansas, y’know? instead of refusing to even TRY. If 1 tenth of the energy and money spent in GA 6 had been spent there – who knows?
D58826
@dnfree: And the earth is flat. I doubt if there is any way to reach a voter like that. Gives the term low information voter a new meaning. I realize that most people have other things going on and are not political junkies like the BJ community but that is some degree of stupid.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@dnfree:
Holy shit. Well, this woman doesn’t deserve to live in a free society on account of being so ass-reamingly stupid.
Burden of proof, how does it fucking work?
Steve in the ATL
@dnfree:
Depressing that morons like this are so close to the bed I’m lying in right now! (Which, to be clear, is the bed in the bedroom of my home).
Omnes Omnibus
@D58826: You are right. This was a disaster. We should all curl up in a ball and weep. Right?
D58826
@Another Scott: this one was on a cute animal site that happened to pop up on my twitter feed. I’ve seen it before and they are into cuddly cats and cute dogs also. They had another one today of a pooch getting his stuffed animal toy, hoping in a raft, pushing off from the side of the pool and then hunkering down for a nap in the pool. If there is re-incarnation I want to come back as THAT dog.
wjs
@OGLiberal: Well, maybe–and I’m just spitballing here–Republicans in a Republican House District like voting for Republicans.
I mean, you can get mad and blame the DNC all you want, and call them idiots, but if you’re shocked to discover Republicans won’t vote for Democrats, I don’t know what to tell you.
The GOP just spent $18 million defending a safe Red seat. How is that not awesome?
D58826
@efgoldman: The D’s have the best shot in the House. In the senate they are defending 24 seats, 10 in red Trump states. Just to keep the 52-48 split they would have to run the board on all 24. Very unlikely. The best they can hope for is to keep the R’s below the 60 vote filibuster limit (assuming it is still there) and not lose too many seats that they can’t regain the Senate in 2020 when the map favors them. All in all two tall orders given recent history.
Tazj
Incredibly stupid take by Seth Moulton who should quit tearing down another D, especially in a red district.
I thought Ossoff didn’t even talk about Trump that much.
Joy Reid’s analysis is much better.
SgrAstar
@Another Scott: Thank you, Scott. The moaning and second guessing around here are so pointless and so deflating. We have to fight a long game, and we have to do that well. We need toughness and conviction, deployed for YEARS, to beat back the terrible tides of racism and intolerance that are swamping our country. No quarter.
D58826
@wjs: While it is not surprising that she won it did look like the D’s had a shot given the Trump factor. And if R’s voting for R’s in an R district how did the GOP flip the Congress in 1994 and then flip the House in 2010. A lot of long serving D’s in what seemed like safe seats went down in both of those years.
D58826
@SgrAstar: True but an occasional win against all odds does wondersf or moral, not to mention fund raising. and the taste of revenge in taking Price/Gingrich seat would have been sooooo sweet.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Imagine if the Dems held a deeeeeeeep blue seat that they consistently won by 25 points in a blue state that hadn’t gone outright red in 40 years and then nearly lost it in a special election.
It would be mass panic.
And there’s no reason it shouldn’t be when the shoe is on the other foot.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Sounds like it’s time for a group cry.
glory b
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): But, if I recall correctly, most of Ossoff’s money was from small donors, it couldn’t just get shifted around.
Also, the DNC ish folks are incompetent know nothings, why would you want them there (snark)?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
yeah, that doesn’t sound anything like what I saw. I heard Moulton on Pod Save Ameirca. a lot to like about him, but IIRC he thinks CNN-ish conventional wisdom is deep and meaningful. A lot of talk about bipartisanship in the House gym and how it can be the start of a new political day.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Damn right. Shit, this stuff pisses me off so much. Fucking fight.
glory b
@D58826: In 2010? They got voted out for voting for the ACA.
Death panels caught the Obama campaign folks by surprise.
Another Scott
@D58826: May still doesn’t have an agreement to actually form a government. She’s hanging by a thread…
We’ll see what happens.
Cheers,
Scott.
wjs
@D58826: Yes. They sacrificed themselves to give Americans health care. And voters responded by throwing them out of office.
Those are the same folks bellyaching about losing their Medicare benefits, by the way.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Tazj: He didn’t. It was a safe R district for 40 years. It’s amazing Ossof came as close as he did
Elie
@D58826:
In 2010 a lot of Democrats fell who knew that they would fall for supporting ACA. They did the right thing for a right thing. The aftermath of that still rolls but we should not forget that we lost for the right reasons: to get the right thing done. And now we must sit and watch their sacrifice for something so good, be lost. I am so heartbroken — not about THIS loss per se, but for the huge effort that was made to give Americans a very good thing — and to have that thrown back …. I tell ya — I may just have to walk away from this for a little while. My deepest and sincerest thanks to all those who fought to have Americans receive healthcare coverage. I deeply regret we couldn’t make it stick — for all your sacrifice and for all the people to whom it would matter….
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): it’s a 2 way street. if you send in “teams” and money the other side sends in “teams” and money and then you’re back to the status quo ante.
Moreover, Montana and Kansas were redder that Georgia: (MT; R+11) & (KS-4; R+15) vs (GA-6; R+8)
see handy guide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index
Put it another way, republicans never try to unseat D+15 seats.
D58826
@glory b: True but a loss by any other name is still loss and shows that safe seats can be flipped.
D58826
@wjs: Yep. And didn’t know that heir SS check was from Uncle sam baby violins for them
FlipYrWhig
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): I think the effect is opposite, though, which I have to think is what brought down Ossoff.
Ossoff became a darling of the progressive set, got attention, got media, got money (including from me, out of state)…
…which galvanized Republicans into sticking it to him, and us, for spite.
The South Carolina race, nobody paid attention to that. IMHO if it had become A Thing the same effect would have cropped up: Republicans getting energized to stick it to the libs and a Democrat getting caught between being happy for the attention and the contrary need to distance himself from the national party that the Republican voters in his district hate more than anything.
Or, to put it another way, trying harder probably means losing, just in a different shape. Republicans vote for the Republican, and they get excited to vote for the Republican when they see Democrats (especially the non-local kind) getting excited about the Democrat.
OGLiberal
@wjs: Because we didn’t. And every loss that threatens my two kids with massively expensive pre-existing conditions that are the fault of nobody (Crohn’s and NF-1) hits me hard because my expensive but manageable employer care is subject to the whims of said employer re: my employment, regardless of how well they tell me I do each year.
This district was -1.5 Clinton in November and the race was against a loop dog from DC and a non-descript kid from Atlanta. How do we not win this given the current popularity of the president, the fact that Clinton only lost the district by 1.5, and that Handel is a nut? Do we just write off the South because most white folks there are racist lunatics and any district we draw will pulk them in?
I blame the Dem party for not winning this race – and i haven’t checked returns in a while but glad to be proven wrong – but shit like this depresses me, and depresses turnout.
And before y’all go apeshit on me about being a “debbie downer”, how the fuck did Russ Feingold lose last year? How the fuck did Rick Scott win re-election. Why do wd have Republucan governors of MA (ETA), MD, NJ and fucking Vermont. Vermont! I hate Bernie Bros – fuck you in advance. I hate libertarians. I am a Dem and a liberal. But what the fuck is up with our nation…Republican are governors of NJ, VT, MA,NH and ME. WTF, Northeast Democrats?
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Moulton is ambitious and has bad instincts. You know how there’s that kind of Republican who came up through College Republicans and a lifelong immersion in Republican media? Moulton strikes me as the Democratic equivalent: someone who read too much DailyKos a dozen years ago and for that reason thinks he has his finger on the pulse. He plays fantasy politics. Remember he was part of the attempted ouster of Pelosi.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
This is literally the very first sentence of the article you linked to:
Why do you link to articles you clearly haven’t even read?
kd bart
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: in the end, probably the worse thing for Ossoff in this race was the two month lag between the jungle primary and the runoff. That amount of time allowed the GOP to solidify their base and bring them home. He might’ve pulled it out a month ago.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t know anything about the South Carolina district, and don’t know anything more about GA-6 than what I read from a distance, but it strikes me as a place where the megachurch holds more or less equal weight with the country club. We may think a vote for Handel is a vote for trump, but to a lot of Price voters (and it looks like a whole bunch of them ditched Handel) a vote for Handel is a vote for tax cuts and something they call “religious freedom”. Who knows, there are, apparently, a lot of Price- Clinton- Handel voters who may see their vote as a vote for President Pence.
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: nope.
If I look at the voting history, and label people who vote for democratic candidates as democrats, Ossoff did a very good job mobilizing those voters. There are usually about 100-125k Democrats who have been voting for democrats for congress in that district during presidential years. That’s our voters. About 50k show up in mid terms, when there is a democrat on the ballot, which is not often. All of our voters showed up. About 90k of their voters didn’t. Their voters were treating this like a mid term. There just aren’t enough de,ocrats in this district. I’d say, though, given our dismal voting behavior in mid terms, if our voters turn out like this in 2018, we will be in for a very good night.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@NR: Hiya N(R)! So what are you personally doing to stop the GOP agenda to turn this country into one party police state? Aside from trolling blogs that is
Elie
@OGLiberal:
You have to face the reality that what we believe — our values, are not popular for the majority of voters right now. Unless we can increase our voters and change a lot of the corruption and animosity to a pluralistic society, we will be stuck. No money alone will reverse this for us. Slow and persistent work to turn around the citizenry is the only thing. Also — please — stop talking about the Democrats as though they are some external entity. WE are the Democrats for better or worse. Stop making it sound like “they” did something stupid to self immolate rather than that we are facing an onslaught of huge amounts of campaign money, abysmal voter ignorance and corruption from the other side. Hate is winning the day and that is not our fault so stop with that. We are back in the early sixties with the dogs and firehoses. Was that the fault of those wanting freedom and justice?
FlipYrWhig
@Peale: I dunno — Handel (who is odious) starting out her victory speech with praise for her dear, dear friend Steve Scalise and crocodile tears about people being targeted for violence for their political beliefs, on top of the late ads and late remarks by her cohort, suggests to me that her campaign thinks part of the winning brew was getting people to vote for her, even if they don’t like her or Trump, because it’s SO IMPORTANT YOU GUYS to stand up to scary dangerous liberals. I am far from the action but it’s going to be part of my working hypothesis for a while yet.
wjs
@OGLiberal: The American people will vote against their economic self-interest every single time they can take food out of starving kid’s mouth if that kid is the wrong color.
THAT’S how you do Debbie Downer.
Elie
@Elie:
I want to add to what I wrote. We are in the midst of a deep period of backlash to the accomplishments of a free and just society. Its been building for a while. There are forces that have manipulated many of the people who need the policies that we support, using every psy ops in the book from racism, to religious extremism to place wedges within our population. Social media and other related tools have helped the speed of success for hate more than spreading tolerance. We will have to figure out how to overcome this but the backlash continues and I am not sure what will be required to stop it.
OGLiberal
@glory b:I’m in full agreement with you. The barriers we put around voting are, simply, stupid. Outside of the stupid voter ID BS, the fact that voting date in all elections is not a national holiday is insane. Our only national election – for President (believe states can choose to hold other elections, whenever they want) is on a freaking Tuesday. That may have been all well and good when only landed gentry who were white and male could vote but not today. Even switching to weekends doesn’t help because, well, is Walmart closed on Saturday. National Holiday, nobody but cops and firefighters need to work (and make it easy for them to vote).
This wouldn’t be that hard to implement, right. (I’m not asking sarcastically..
.think it would be pretty easy.
Peale
@FlipYrWhig: by the time their done counting, she will have a few thousand votes less than Tom Price did in 2014. 70,000 fewer than he did in 2016. 5k fewer than the election in 2006, when everyone and their uncle wanted to vote out the GOP. That year, about 55k of our voters showed up. What I’m seeing here is that despite bad opinion polls, no one in this district has really changed their mind, but our voters responded. It’s just that even in a good non-presidential year, we need to find about 10,000 more voters in this district to vote for us. where those will come from is as good of a guess as any. But that’s just this district. Karen Handel can say what she wants, but she didn’t inspire more than the regular mid term voters to come out for her.
Aleta
By Thursday the Republicans will be telling us that an outsider plot in Georgia to topple the government was detected and defeated by Jared’s tech skills and Ivanka’s serious face.
FlipYrWhig
@Peale: Point taken. I’m dreading The Narrative, though, which I suspect will be that Kathy Griffin, Shakespeare in the Park, and the Scalise shooting led decent folk to Send A Message about overheated partisanship. I can hear it being intoned by po-faced shaking heads at morning news-show couches already.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@FlipYrWhig: Darcy Burner Woulda Won
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@NR: He learned it from you.
TenguPhule
@OGLiberal:
Check for Russian interference and Republican vote gutting.
They did it last time and learned it worked. Why wouldn’t they try again?
Uncle Cosmo
@Mnemosyne:
Um – no. If they are “freaking the fuck out” about anything, it’s that last night’s results essentially track the Presidential election results (Hillary lost GA-06 by 3% IIRC) rather than the last 20 years of HoR elections in that district, where they won in a walk.
If their prospects depend upon how the electorate views the Trump Administration, they’re in trouble, because Cheeto Benito has another 16 months to screw up before the midterms. Not even counting whatever might come out re the Russian connection. Their firewall consists of the tendency of people who’ve been proven wrong to double down on their beliefs out of sheer cussedness, & that may be part of what happened yesterday – but there’s a threshold level of pain that will cause those people to think twice, & once the true scope of the Thuglican putsch hits home, that may push their electorate over the edge. We can only hope.