Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

We still have time to mess this up!

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

You are here: Home / Authors In Our Midst / Open Thread and Colorado Update: Libertarian Spoiler

Open Thread and Colorado Update: Libertarian Spoiler

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Colorado Update: Libertarian Spoiler

You may remember when I posted about CO-8 going to the Democratic candidate Caraveo, I mentioned that a Libertarian played a bit of a spoiler, pulling in almost 4% of the vote. It gets funnier:

Whether his voters would have voted at all if it weren’t for him, I guess we’ll never know. But rock on, Dan, rock on.

In CO-3 – Boebert has taken enough of a lead to not force a recount, for now. Probably another week before we have an answer. I suspect there will be a recount regardless because there are 6,200 ballots that are “under votes” meaning the machines said they did not vote for either candidate – those will get a closer look if there is a recount.

And on a completely different note: Chicago area peeps – our own Dorothy Winsor will be at two events this weekend if you are looking for something to do.

Central Library
130 South Roselle Road
Schaumburg, IL 60193
Saturday, Nov. 12 • Noon-3 p.m.
Teens, Kids, All Ages, Adults

Join us for our annual fair showcasing local authors. Meet fiction and nonfiction authors writing for youth, teens and adults. Books will be available for purchase.

==========

And on Sunday she’ll be at WindyCon in Lombardi, IL

She’ll be doing a reading at noon and will be on a panel at 1 pm.

I’m having a small dinner party this weekend, so I’ll be busy cleaning and cooking, so no Kindness today. Maybe I’ll put together a recipe post. Menu is fairly simple: chili, collard greens, cornbread and I’m thinking double chocolate cookies topped with vanilla ice cream.

This is an open thread

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  5. 5.

    trucmat

    Colorado 8th … Tina Peters … Pillow man … Thousands of under votes … The highest scrutiny and care will be needed in that recount. Colorado can handle it fairly but who knows whether Boebert gets shown the exit.

  7. 7.

    NutmegAgain

    Likely dumb question alert!  TaMara, I have a short video of Dog to be, but I don’t know how to reach you… tx

  9. 9.

    JML

    I don’t complain about seeing “Libertarians” on the ballot line; these days they tend to hurt Republicans in the same fashion that Greens used to play spoiler for the Dems 20 years ago. They’re rarely actually libertarian (especially after the Ron Paul nonsense), just bros who want to smoke pot and not pay taxes. If they were actually libertarian, they would oppose any regulation of abortion or birth control and funny…that never seems to come up!

    But libertarianism simply doesn’t work as a functioning ethos in a modern society. We’re too interconnected, there are too many services that need to be performed to avoid chaos and collapse, and it’s one of those ideas whose time has come and gone. All that’s left are partial ones and when you try and pick and choose major portions out of an ethos it falls apart pretty quickly.

  15. 15.

    Nicole

    That was a fascinating listen, but I think they buried the lede- two women running on the D and R spot, and here’s an XY running.

    Hmm… maybe Dems should look at that going forward if they have two women running against each other in the D and R spots- find some schmo to run as a Libertarian.  Dems did well with the primary ads highlighting how nuts certain R candidates were…

  16. 16.

    Miss Bianca

    Well, I am still hoping Frisch manages to pull it out in the end, but meantime…glad not to be in CD-3 anymore!

    And if nothing else, this nail-biter shows that Democrats can, indeed, be competitive in that district. And that Boebert better watch her ass. Instead of inviting all of us to see it all the time.

  19. 19.

    Starfish

    @Tom Levenson: Tom, did you watch any of the stuff about the FTX melt down? I thought you might have interesting opinions on that.

    Here is a video that goes through Harry Potter fans and sexy wood nymphs to get there.

  22. 22.

    JML

    @Starfish: Ron Paul was always a republican in libertarian clothing, which has been their reality for a long time. And yes, as a “party” they’ve always been very anti-woman. It’s a white bro party for people with money with just enough heft behind it to be seductive to people who don’t think very hard about the positions (and want to smoke pot and not pay taxes).

    I got boosted and a flu shot yesterday, so I’m extra cranky today.

  23. 23.

    TaMara

    So in weird news at my house: Jasper tested positive for hookworms. Which is unusual. So all the dogs are getting dewormed, though Scout and Trixie only tested positive for giardia. I’m also getting tested, but the chances are his is just a residual infection from his poor living conditions, and his treatments in rescue didn’t get it all. Fun times. Hookworn can’t really survive here outside the body – too dry. And I keep the backyard pretty feces-free, so nowhere for them to reproduce.

    Just adventures in rescues. I have friends who worked for years with rescued wolves, and they had to do a deworming yearly per their doctor, just as a precaution. And also had to get rabies vaccines – I was unaware that was a thing for people, I thought it was only used as a treatment if you were exposed.

  29. 29.

    TaMara

    @bbleh: That’s what I get, too when I look at the numbers (nothing has changed since Thursday night). But maybe they know something they haven’t dropped yet.

    Interesting – In CO, I don’t know about elsewhere – they hold back about 1k ballots in the preliminary numbers and then add those to the military/overseas ballots so as to be able to keep the anonymity of those voters. So even if it’s only 34 ballots, they get mixed in with a random 1K.

  30. 30.

    Nicole

    @TaMara: Sorry about the hookworm.   It’s par for the course adopting from a lot of shelters here in NYC.  Fortunately, it’s not like heartworm; it’s an easier fix.

    Zookeepers get rabies vaccines yearly; I suspect it’s probably something to do with working with wild animals and increased risk, compared to the rest of us.

  32. 32.

    Brachiator

    @JML:

    They’re rarely actually libertarian (especially after the Ron Paul nonsense), just bros who want to smoke pot and not pay taxes.

    Voters in two states approved legalizing recreational cannabis through ballot initiatives on Tuesday’s midterm elections. This is becoming a mainstream position. Libertarians can no longer claim to be especially radical on this point.

    If they were actually libertarian, they would oppose any regulation of abortion or birth control and funny…that never seems to come up!

    But libertarianism simply doesn’t work as a functioning ethos in a modern society.

    Except for wanting no taxation, the stains of racism and sexism seem to keep libertarians yoked to the GOP. Libertarians have always been inconsistent on some of these points. Libertarian avatar Ayn Rand was militantly Pro choice, and free market libertarians should have rejected Trump’s use of tariffs.

    Libertarians and anarchists claim to want to abolish society as most people understand it.

  33. 33.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @JML: just bros who want to smoke pot and not pay taxes

    Don’t forget their desire for unfettered access to guns and ammo :(

  34. 34.

    Miss Bianca

    OMG, I just watched that Kyle Clark video and it is funny as hell. Gotta send it to my Libertarian-leaning bro friends and cackle. Thank you, Dan!

  35. 35.

    bbleh

    @TaMara:  and IIRC they have until THURSDAY for military/overseas ballots to arrive. So in any case I’d guess they won’t announce a recount until at least the end of the week.

    Oh well. We should know about NV Senate by Monday or Tuesday. Boebert can wait.

  39. 39.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JML:

    Ron Paul was always a republican in libertarian clothing, which has been their reality for a long time.

    small correction: Rand is a Republican in libertarian clothing, Papa Ron was (is?) a segregationist in Libertarian drag

  42. 42.

    Joey Maloney

    Rand is a Republican in libertarian clothing, Papa Ron was (is?) a segregationist in Libertarian drag

    Tomayto, tomahto.

  43. 43.

    Benw

    Unseasonably hot, humid and windy here so my 5k race this morning was bonked. I held my goal pace for about 5 minutes and then took my foot off the gas. But it was a gorgeous morning!

  44. 44.

    Scout211

    [I posted this comment downstairs in the wrong thread.  Reposting here:]

    Nice article from The 19th News this morning celebrating Tina Kotek and Maura Healy.

    ETA: You won’t believe how autocorrect changed Kotek’s name. (x for the k). Yikes! All you lucky Oregonians, be sure to proofread before posting her name in your comments!

    Tina Kotek is projected to win the close Oregon governor’s race, according to Decision Desk HQ, joining Maura Healey in Massachusetts as the only other out lesbian governor ever elected in the country.

    Healey and Kotek were among the record number of LGBTQ+ political candidates to win their primaries, according to the Victory Fund, which works to elect LGBTQ+ officials. This year also marked the first time that LGBTQ+ candidates ran in all 50 states.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Scout211: CNN getting blowback (not enough) for a puff-piece on Casey DeSantis, makes me wonder if there’s a Mrs Healy, and where is the profile on the patient helpmeet that I’m sure Mr Gretchen Whitmer is?

    That kind of instantaneous and snarky feedback to legacy media is one reason to hope twitter survives

  50. 50.

    cain

    @trucmat: It always amazes me how they weasel out of these things. They deserve to get kicked out and never come back and not have a political career.

    Either way, I think though this election shows that there is very literal tolerance for colorado cowgirl.

  51. 51.

    Tom Levenson

    @Starfish: Been taking a bit of interest in it. Haven’t dived into the proximate cause for the collapse. I’m stuck in 19th c. anthrax on the current project and trying not to pay much attn. to much else.

    But I have to say I’m neither surprised by the particular failure or the general crypto mess. So many marks. So little time.

    I am curious to know if Musk still has any crypto exposure. My sense was he pumped and dumped and is not now deeply involved, but who knows. It would amuse me if he were.

  54. 54.

    CaseyL

    @Starfish: I object to Boyle’s slam against sultry wood nymphs!

    More seriously: the problem isn’t that she enjoys LARPing; the problem is that FTX entrusted people with little experience in finance and risk management with the entire portfolio of investment and risk management.

    And the FTX catastrophe sounds nearly identical to the credit/mortgage meltdown in 2008: stratospherically inflating the value of investment assets and then borrowing against that inflated value.  (The one difference in this case is FTX wasn’t able to spread the loans-against-imaginary-wealth to every bank on the planet.)

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    How dare that monster do this!!1 This should be a class action suit, amirite??!!

    Giving free entry into national parks for veterans is a real slap in the face to all the veterans over the years who have had to pay to enter national parks. https://t.co/maJ17iaHEX

    — A.R. Moxon, Ṽerífíed Dück 🦆 (@JuliusGoat) November 12, 2022

    (DOI.gov)

    (via nycsouthpaw)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  59. 59.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @Scout211:

    That’s good news.  Oregon looked like it was going to screw itself over.

    Kotek almost screwed herself over.  In her role as majority leader in the OR House she has opposed and blocked campaign finance for years.  Ostensibly to protect the influence of her union allies.  OR still has no limits of any kind.   But in this cycle Phil Knight and other out-of-state billionaires decided to drop nearly unlimited funds into the campaigns of her opponents including funding the independent candidate who almost took her out as a spoiler.  Oops.

  61. 61.

    oldgold

    Which party controls the House might be a month to month matter.

    Since January of 2020 through today there have been 15 special House elections.

    This number is not unusual. 67 special elections have been called during the 113th through 117th Congresses.

  66. 66.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Was just looking at the Kansas Governor race results, there was also a Libertarian candidate and an Independent, with 1.1% and 2% of the vote respectively. I bet their presence on the ballot helped Laura Kelly win. Interesting Kansas City Star article: What went wrong? Kansas Republicans point fingers after Schmidt’s loss to Kelly

    Kansas Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt on Oct. 24 received what could have been a useful development in the extremely close contest for governor: national assessment scores measuring math and reading had fallen among Kansas students. The drop played right into Schmidt’s criticism of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s decision to become the first governor in the country to switch to remote learning for the remainder of the academic year as COVID-19 spread in the spring of 2020. But Schmidt and his allies that day were focused on drag shows. Schmidt and the Republican Governors Association seized on a report in a British tabloid that Kansas taxpayer dollars had supported a recent open to all ages event in Wichita that included a drag show.

    The RGA and Schmidt sent scalding statements and Schmidt held a late afternoon news conference in Wichita to further condemn Kelly — even as the attack quickly fell apart under scrutiny, with the Kansas Department of Commerce saying no tax dollars funded drag shows. Meanwhile, Schmidt’s campaign took nearly five hours to weigh in on the assessment scores. “It was very much a throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks scenario, I think, in the last month-and-a-half,” said a Republican strategist familiar with the race, who nevertheless defended the late focus on drag shows.

    Schmidt’s loss to Kelly this week was a demoralizing blow to Kansas Republicans, who believed they stood a solid chance of denying her a second term even as they acknowledged the race would be close. Kelly’s victory was historic, as she became the first Kansas Democrat since 1978 to win the governor’s race while the party controls the White House, though some Republicans also noted an incumbent governor hasn’t lost a general election since 1990.

  69. 69.

    artem1s

    @Joey Maloney:

    Rand is a Republican in libertarian clothing, Papa Ron was (is?) a segregationist in Libertarian drag

    Papa Ron wasn’t at all picky about his positions. He was the first small donor grifter. Any issue that would separate $25 from the pocket of a potential donor was fair game. He was in Congress for over a decade and still claimed ‘outsider’ status when he ran (grift ran) for POTUS. His early stuff targeted the usual gold-bug, anti-semite, anti-New World Order conspiracy theorist. His fundraisers were the first to do donor bombing on key reporting dates so his support looked bigger than it actually was. They were the first to claim they didn’t take money from corporations and big donors (they took money from anyone who would write them a check). It was all designed to build hype that would draw in new donors and grab their emails and phone numbers. The leaders of Libertarian party’s main goal isn’t to influence policy, it’s making a career and making money off running for office.

  70. 70.

    Lapassionara

    There was a libertarian candidate in the Georgia senate race. My question is, will they vote in the run off, or will they sit it out. If they vote, do they go R or D?

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    @NutmegAgain: To reach any of the front pagers, just use their nym at balloon-juice.com

    If they have two names, like John Cole, just put a hyphen in between.

    If you look at Contact Us in the white menu up top, you will see instructions and an example.

  74. 74.

    Geminid

    I’ve seen a couple savvy political analysts express the hope the Fritsch will give Boebert a rematch in 2024. They think he can beat Boebert with a presidential year electorate. I don’t expect to see Boebert make some pragmatic pivot between now and then.

    I’m hoping Elaine Luria will try to reclaim her seat in the Virginia 2nd CD. That might be tougher. Luria lost by ~6%, and Jen Kiggans, the new Rep, is no Boebert.

  75. 75.

    cain

    @Kent: I’m not completely adversed to that considering that I would like to have the teacher’s union to have influence. :)

  76. 76.

    Kent

    @Lapassionara:There was a libertarian candidate in the Georgia senate race. My question is, will they vote in the run off, or will they sit it out. If they vote, do they go R or D?

    I doubt that 1 in 100 of the Libertarian voters in the general election were actual Libertarian party members with a Libertarian ideology who went out and actively voted for the Libertarian candidate.

    I expect the other 99 out of 100 were just ordinary voters who, when they got to the Senate portion of their ballot just voted for the Libertarian guy for whatever reason:  He was the only white guy, a pox on both parties, or they were Republicans who couldn’t stomach voting for Walker.

    How many of them will turn out when only the Senate is on the ballot?  And how will they vote?  Who knows.

  78. 78.

    Kent

    @cain:@Kent: I’m not completely adversed to that considering that I would like to have the teacher’s union to have influence. :)

    All I’m saying is that she made a deliberate decision to block any restrictions on campaign finance donations that would have limited big donors (unions, corporations, billionaires) from dropping large sums into races.

    And it very nearly bit her in the ass.  Betsy Johnson, the “independent” candidate and former rural Dem (basically a Manchin in skirts) got her campaign jump-started by millions and millions of dollars from Phil Knight and a host of other deep-pocketed out-of-state Republican donors.   Without Johnson in the race it would not have been close.

    The closed OR primaries also led to this result.  It would not have happened under WA or CA’s jungle primaries under which Kotek would have cruised to victory.

  80. 80.

    Geminid

    @Kent: A lot of Libertarian voters are oppositional in their motivation, and have no particular allegience to principles. Some of those might stay home, and some of the more principled ones might sit the runoff out too. In any event, there were not that many Libertarian voters, just enough to force a runoff.

    The group I’m interested in are the Kemp/Walker voters. I think many of them came out mainly to stop Stacey Abrams and/or because they like their Governor. A big dropoff among this group would sink Walker.

  81. 81.

    JML

    @Lapassionara: it’s the big question for GA: who drops off in the runoff and how many? Traditionally, dems have struggled to turn out the vote a second time, but we beat that 2 years ago. Trend or blip?

    Right now, I would guess that most of the “libertarians” sit it out, but the real issue is whether or not Warnock can muster as much of his election day vote a second time. Guessing that dems will be slightly more energized since we have a candidate we like, but also because senate control won’t be decided by GA this time (assuming NV continues like it appears). I think that demoralizes GOP voters who sucked it up to vote for Walker, but they’re going to lose a bunch of them in the runoff. But again: traditionally the dems have the steeper drop in the runoff.

  84. 84.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    Do you think this near loss will motivate Kotek and others to push for campaign finance reform in OR?

  85. 85.

    Major Major Major Major

    @artem1s: Ron Paul is a classic paleolibertarian. A dying breed, I’d thought, though an especially devolved version seems to have captured the national party and most state chapters.

    Rand Paul is a Republican who hates occupational licensing.

    @Brachiator: Libertarians are more divided on abortion than a lot of people think because some consider the fetus to be deserving of liberty too.

  86. 86.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Another Scott: A lot of the numbers guys did a pretty good job, especially G. Elliott Morris at The Economist, who explicitly disavowed vibes-based predictions. Worst performer has gotta be Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics, who really thought Trafalgar had the special sauce because their results matched his vibes. His twitter feed is a hilarious pile of cope and confusion and anger, and a weird amount of vitriol about Mastodon.

  87. 87.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I think I remember reading here that the Libertarian Party has been captured by white supremacists in the last few years. The so-called Mises caucus.

    The Libertarian Party is collapsing. Here’s why

    Only a few years after its greatest triumph, the Libertarian Party is collapsing, torn apart by an insurgency of alt-right sympathizers with racist tendencies. Libertarianism, the idea that state power must be absolutely minimized, relies on ideas of individual rights that seem flatly inconsistent with racism. And yet libertarian rhetoric has always had powerful attractions for those who wanted to resist racial equality. How is that possible?

    There is in fact a connection, but it is one of psychology and political history rather than logic.

    […]

    On Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire tweeted (in a later deleted post) that “America isn’t in debt to black people. If anything it’s the other way around.” Caucus members have called for violent repression of antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters. The new leadership’s first and most prominent decision was to remove from the party platform language declaring, “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.”

    As a result, the party is facing mass defections. In 2016, Gary Johnson was the most successful Libertarian presidential candidate in history. He got almost 4.5 million votes (3.3 percent of the votes cast, three times more than any previous Libertarian candidate, including Johnson himself in 2012).

    The crackup is in part the result of crass political machinations. The insurgents are funded by donors who have been close to former President Trump, suggesting that the takeover is part of a coordinated Republican stratagem to destroy a party that has been draining away Republican votes. If Trump had gotten every Libertarian vote in 2020, he would have won. The chairman of the New Mexico Libertarian Party wrote that the leadership has “adopted messaging and communications hostile to the principles for which the Libertarian Party was founded, serving no purpose other than to antagonize and embarrass.” That may indeed be the purpose. Battles for control of the state party are also happening in Virginia and Massachusetts.

  93. 93.

    Kent

    @Major Major Major Major:@Kent: Con artists and crypto weirdos can be democrats.

    Right.  But obviously this particular individual who owned FTX had absolutely MASSIVE dirt and corruption monsters under the bed that he wanted to keep covered up and that would be potentially revealed by increased government scrutiny.

    It is instrumental to look at what TYPE of Democratic candidates he funded.  For example, he dropped a TON of money into one of the OR primary races in favor of another crypto fanboy candidate:  Take a read of this article from the May primary:  https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1097691538/bitter-feuds-and-crypto-ties-inside-one-of-the-most-expensive-democratic-primari

  96. 96.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): All I know is, there’s a long history of Internet libertarians making a great show of “I don’t see race, you’re the racist” and then announcing that facts and logic scientifically reveal that black people are disadvantaged by genetic IQ inferiority.

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