Three weeks ago, catfishncod wrote this on Balloon Juice
“How can the GOP save itself?” is the wrong question; the built-in assumptions prevent a solution.
“How can we salvage as many supporters of democracy as possible from extremism?” is a better question, but still not quite right.
“How do we remove institutional and structural support for minority rule?” Now we’re getting somewhere. The entire discussion both at (FTF)NYT and here takes the dysfunctional two-party system for granted, but it’s only an artifact of the combination of primaries + FPTP + gerrymanders + nationalization of politics.
Don’t try to save the GOP. Make it possible for the center-right to save itself, and in so doing, save our democracy. The tools that could do so are known: instant runoff, jungle primary, fusion ticketing, multi-member districting, independent districting commissions, a formula to expand the House, judicial reform, enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What we need to do is bundle it, package it, sell it, and get it done.
Then we can stop worrying about stealth *autogolpes and rule by One Weird Trick, and do productive things like treating domestic terrorism as the violent criminal conspiracy it is.
*I wasn’t familiar with that term; here’s what the google has to say about it:
A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from the Spanish: autogolpe), or coup from the top, is a form of coup d’état in which a nation’s head, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.
What catfishncod is describing is, I think, exactly what Michigan did over a period of years. Michigan is a success story, if I’ve ever seen one! Wisconsin has taken the first step with election of a Supreme Court that can hopefully start to break the chokehold on Wisconsin.
We took a nice, long break after all the hard work we did in the run-up to Nov 2022, but I think the break is officially over. :-)
What can we do to help Wisconsin and other states move toward being the next Michigan?
Open thread.
Jesse
Agree that ranked-choice voting is something that should be encouraged. Looks like it has some (modest) momentum. Any new jurisdictions on tap in 2024 using it?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I think the fundraising and postcard writing here has been an absolute net positive.
Being an Ohioan, I’d like to see a vigorous postcard campaign for the August special election our statehouse has put upon us to raise the thresholds to amend the state constitution
Jesse
Also, too, as we move forward, we need to be open to those joining our ranks who, say, 10 and 20 years ago, were most certainly not in our ranks. I’ve noticed this already in recent years. Long gone are the days when, say, the Rs were exclusively the home of normie proud Americans, (ex-)military, and just basic national pride. The left has its own form of non-pride (witness the discussion of moving abroad when an election doesn’t go as expect, something the right would never think to utter), but overall, I do sense that the Ds are gradually soaking up just plain decent Americans, which makes the right increasingly toxic.
rikyrah
The Mayor of Chicago lives in Austin. That is so wild to me.
Jesse
@rikyrah: Wow, really? How is that possible?
Is it just me or are these blatant non-residency thing increasing, and not just on the right?
Baud
@rikyrah:
The one who just won?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@rikyrah:
@Baud:
@Jesse:
There’s a neighborhood of Chicago named Austin apparently
Austin, Illinois
rikyrah
@Jesse:
It’s a West Side neighborhood. :)
The Mayor lives on the West Side. That is like CRAZY to me.
Not chi-chi West Loop.
But, AUSTIN.
Cameron
Then there places like Florida that will be somewhat more difficult to change. As an example, to show his commitment to a quality public university system, Governor DeSantis has signed a bill preventing the use of any state funding for university DEI programs. The most important thing for the university system and the state of Florida that he and his pet legislature could cook up.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@rikyrah: Not sure if this setup is an upper Midwest thing but I know Detroit has these independent political entities, like a town within a city that has it’s own local government. I think Hamtramck is like that. Is Austin a Chi-town version of that? Grand Rapids, MI also has a East Grand Rapids, which is near the far Eastern edge of the city but pretty much surrounded by Grand Rapids proper on all sides.
James E Powell
County party organizations need money, training, money, data support, and money.
I don’t know how to make that happen, but organization is what we need more than anything else.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Austin is less than 10 miles from Chicago, and 15 miles from where I grew up.
Are you shocked because it’s not Chicago proper? That it’s the west side?
trollhattan
Former FTFNYT writer who led their covid coverage, skewers FTFNYT for their aggressive MAGA-lite interview of Dr. Fauci by Hipster Writer with three names.
https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/new-york-times-magazine-interview-with-dr-fauci-science-fiction-ba715def4470
James E Powell
@Jesse:
Not trying to start a fight, but this is not exactly true.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: Yeah, “let’s flee to Russia” is actually getting a weird cult following.
Jesse
@James E Powell: I’ve seen some discussion of bailing out to Russia (!) on the right, but I typically don’t see things like Canada, Portugal, etc. Where does the right, when things don’t work out their way, want to go? Costa Rica?
Layer8Problem
@Bupalos: “Doomed, DOOMED . . .”
Waitaminit, that was two posts down. Sorry folks, no answer yet on how Biden’s disappointed us once again.
trollhattan
@rikyrah: We have a city councilman who was revealed as living in a tony suburb well outside the city limits. He does own a house in his district that is a rental completely drenched in vehicles–more than a dozen–and the source of a lot of police calls.
Somehow he “lives there’ and because his “wife own the other home” he has skated through the scrutiny and remains in his seat. He also owns businesses that have a lot of complaints about workers not being paid, etc. Terrific fellow, in all.
Barbara
GOTV is the best investment you can make — so many other patterns and predilections are set in stone, basically generational stone, such that “issue oriented” campaigns are almost always a long shot in swaying voters. I did read a Raw Story excerpt from a Politico piece that looked at declining rates of participation in organized religion as being somewhat predictive or rising Democratic electoral successes. Of course, even there, Republican excesses that are couched in religious belief are probably driving many people away from religion, so it’s probably accelerating a longer term trend.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Layer8Problem:
I guess they deleted? What did they say?
JaySinWA
@Jesse: New Zealand has been the moderately rich people’s escape plan. Several have purchased acreage.
Matt McIrvin
@Jesse: Russia, Israel, Singapore sometimes. They’ll admire the ethnic homogeneity of the Nordic countries or Japan, and carefully ignore all the ways in which it’s not their ideal place.
TheOtherHank
The main problem, as I see it, at the national level is that most of the problems can only really be solved by amending the constitution. This is not going to happen. But one thing that would at least address the electoral college is to increase the size of the House of Representatives. This can happen legislatively. Make the number of people in a congressional district be the population of the least populous state (or half the population so every state gets at least 2), then let the size of the house grow and shrink as population shifts dictate. Why should someone in Wyoming have their vote for president count for more than my vote in California? If we did this, the number of electors due to every state getting 1 for each senator would be drowned out.
Oh, and increase the size of the Supreme Court. I don’t care how many justices there are. If they’re going to act like a legislature, make each vote count for less. If there are so many that they have to meet in a football stadium, that’s fine with me.
JML
Making sure we don’t lose sight of local elections (particularly in the state legislature, but also paying attention to things like county executive/county boards and school boards are also very very important) is incredibly impactful removing the right-wing stink. A lot of decisions are made at the local level, and many great leaders get their starts in public service there as well.
The legislatures are where the gerrymandering really happens, and the GOP has been ruthless (shameless?) in using any window where it holds power to a) cement their control, and 2) to get through as many of their “priorities” as they can without any compromise. I’m not saying we should act the same way, but denying them trifectas in the states stems the rot. Keeping the crazies off or marginalized on the school boards is essential: it takes very little time for a district to get wrecked (I can think of one locality in my state where the school district was seen as the crown jewel in the region, and in a short time after the lunatic fringe took over the school board the superintendent quit and staff turnover has jumped significantly). Getting smart pragmatic leaders at the county level helps too: they frequently run elections for one thing, but also just manage a lot of the basic functions of government, and are great allies against idiot governors.
It can’t just be about Congress or the Presidency. Those are very very important, but we have to keep thinking locally as well. legislative seats can get flipped quickly and are hard to predict. same with school board & county seats as well.
Layer8Problem
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They didn’t delete, but I corrected the link so that works now. Needless to say, Biden’s once again disappointed us, with the disappointing.
Matt McIrvin
…Oh, and, of course, a lot of the right seems to have a real bee in their bonnet about how Orbán’s Hungary is the ideal society. They can fuck off to there anytime.
Tom Q
A heads-up for those enamored of ranked choice voting:
It’s obviously a great answer for things like the ME governorship, where lefties might have fringe-voted into infinity and kept LePage a minority right-wing office-holder.
But it’s also responsible for sticking NY with Eric Adams. Voters were confronting a field of 13, all unknown except Andrew Yang, and their blind voting ranked-choice picks gave us — by a 1% margin — a Dem nominee none of us knew. Given that the GOP opponent was Curtis Sliwa, we had no choice but to vote Adams in November, and I hope you see what a disaster he’s been (in terms of Dem messaging alone — he’s trumpeted the false Crime is Out of Control narrative, and has advocated for returning prayer to schools).
Under the old system, the top two vote-getters in the primary would have met in a run-off, and we might well have dug deep enough into Adams’ profile that we’d have headed off this nightmare.
And, as far as jungle primaries, isn’t there always the possibility the dominant party in a district will field so many candidates that the opposition takes the first two slots, and ensures minority election? Not sure that’s a great system, either.
Just saying, there are downsides to all political workarounds, so I’m dubious about any changes offering necessary improvement.
Matt McIrvin
@TheOtherHank: The thing is, even legislation is largely impossible at the federal level. They’ve just sludged up everything so that nothing can ever happen.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Jesse: IDK other than Russia. I guess Hungary is run by one of the authoritarians they admire. Used to be they thought Australia was great but then the Aussies went and adopted sane gun laws. Seems like New Zealand is probably too left wing too and I think they’ve adopted laws that have made it hard for foreigners to buy property there because the super rich were buying the place up for in case of emergency homes and pricing out locals.
Matt McIrvin
@JaySinWA: Do they think they can just overthrow the local political culture of New Zealand? It’s not exactly a Republican’s dream.
Jesse
@Tom Q: I think Alaska House elections doing ranked-choice at both the primary — which is a jungle — and general. I think the purpose of the primary, then, is to find four candidates for the general. 13 sounds bananas.
JaySinWA
@Layer8Problem: I am not sure why you are pursuing this. It was pretty clear from their statement that they believe Biden has preemptively surrendered to the House Rs. It’s an article of faith, not subject to question.
Jesse
Thanks for all the feedback about the right and moving to other countries. I attributed to them an attitude of “America love it or leave it”, which I thought still endured. I first encountered that kind of thinking during the Bush2 years and the right’s response to criticism about the Iraq War. It sounds like there’s a chunk of the right that goes against that grain (even if what they think is baseless, in that they think they’re going to a place that’s more politically palatable to them than the US).
Layer8Problem
@JaySinWA: Yes, but a link justifying this opinion would be so helpful in actualizing my own disappointment. Hey, I almost had a Jesuit education, with the logical arguments and the QEDs and like that.
Geminid
@Tom Q: I think the old NYC voting system required a runoff if no candidate exceeded 40%. In Adams’ case, there would have been a runoff because he won ~32% of the first choice votes.
lee
IMHO I think ending gerrymandering probably should be the top on the list. A few states have ended it and have seen positive results.
It could be ended with a different SCOTUS decision. The current(?) makeup of SCOTUS decided to keep it. Hopefully in a decade or so we might get it back to the court.
JaySinWA
@Matt McIrvin: They want to pull off a successful
Rajneeshpuram maneuver using their wealth to shape the areas they own to their liking.
Plans may have changed since this 2018 article focusing on mega rich libertarians.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
Gin & Tonic
@Jesse: I’d pay good cash money to see even one of these MAGA goobers sell his house and move to russia. It will not go the way they imagine.
Roger Moore
@Jesse:
I’m not a big fan of ranked-choice voting, at least given the rest of our political system. If you were voting on just a handful of races, and if there were some sensible system to winnow the field down to a manageable number of candidates, I think it would work. But that’s not what we’re really faced with. We have a ton of offices to fill- for me it’s 20 before getting into judicial races*- which makes it painful enough to come up with ranked choice ballots for all those offices that many people won’t do it.
The basic problem is that people have a limited amount of attention to pay to politics. Some people, like the kind of people who post on political blogs, have a lot, but most ordinary citizens don’t have as much. That limits how much they’re willing to do. If the demands of the electoral system go beyond what they’re willing to do, they’ll skip out. If you increase the amount of effort needed for each vote while keeping the number of offices to vote for the same, people will just give up.
So one thing I think we need to do is to reduce the number of races. Instead of voting for all the statewide executive offices, we should do what we do at the federal level and elect a governor and lt. governor on a single ballot and have them appoint the rest of the executive team. The same thing with the sheriff, assessor, and DA; they should be appointed by the board of supervisors. That would reduce the number of offices I have to vote for drastically and give me more time to pay attention to the people I’m going to be voting for. Switching to a unicameral legislature might help, too.
*That’s 7 legislative (2 US senators, US House, state senate, state assembly, county supervisor, and city council) and 13 executive (President, Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Controller, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Insurance Commissioner, Attorney General, Sheriff, Assessor, District Attorney, and mayor).
Suzanne
@Jesse:
Richard Rorty (I think?) said something similar, that it is important for both parties to craft a picture of national pride and aspiration.
I see conflict over this when I observe this kind of interaction:
Well-meaning person reacting to institutional racism/sexism/homophobia/etc says, “THIS IS NOT WHO WE ARE AS AMERICANS.”
Other well-meaning person replies, “Yes, this is exactly who we are, and have been for much of our history [cites terrible historical events].”
Both are correct, but working at different purposes. We would be more effective messengers if we were clearer about articulating what our purpose was at that moment. The first person is trying to rhetorically draw boundaries and appeal to conscience. The second person is trying to educate.
This is the thing that Barack Obama is absolutely the best at, in the modern day. Better than Biden, though Biden is good at it….. creating a modern, relevant, positive, aspirational vision of what it means to be a Democrat and an American.
lollipopguild
@Matt McIrvin: I personally would like to see lots of right wingers move to Russia or Hungary. If they won’t move abroad maybe we can get them to all move to Florida or Texas.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Gin & Tonic:
They won’t ever move to Russia unless they are fleeing law enforcement. Hungary, maybe, because it is still part of Europe with all of those economic and cultural advantages. Dreher did it.
Geminid
@Jesse: I think that in Alaska only the November runoff is ranked choice. The jungle primary is not, but the top four finishers advance.
Alaska has an unusually high number of Independents, and that might be a reason they moved to the new system. Although I sometimes wonder if it was a plot by political consultants to drum up more business.
Jesse
@Gin & Tonic: It still amazes me — something that we saw rise in 2015/16, with perhaps some fringe elements before then — that the right somehow views Russia favorably. I’m so old that I remember a time when kind of thinking would have been just bananapants on the right. How can you simultaneously think both Reagan and Putin are awesome?
H.E.Wolf
In my opinion, the less glamorous the activity, the greater its chance of making a positive difference.
GOTV (including postcard writing) and fundraising for GOTV groups – particularly groups that are led by and focused on people of color – get results.
I’m very appreciative of the work Balloon Juice has done in this regard. It’s been a community organizing effort par excellence, and I look forward to being involved in future jackal-y endeavors of this type.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Also more complicated the system, greater the opportunity to create mayhem and to cheat.
Roberto el oso
@Jesse: RWNJs will be extremely disappointed if they imagine Costa Rica as a possible haven. Costa Rica has fairly strict gun laws, and a long history of civilian rule, and since there’s no standing army they are extremely leery of military-style organizations.
Jesse
@Suzanne: /me waves to fellow Rorty fan. I’ve got a dog-eared copy of Achieving Our Country next to me as I type.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@trollhattan: I sometimes wonder whether our local paper, which exposed the fraud and then got slapped in the face when the city council accepted the coverup story, has been secretly following up on the case and lying in wait to spring some new revelation. I also wonder whether the new mayor of Chicago will try to revive the city using his Austin Powers.
Jay
@Jesse:
Nobody wants to move to Canada, it’s too crowded, too woke, has taxes, gun laws, free medical care, ( soon dental), Indiginous land claims, you know, all that communist stuff, unlike Putin”s Ruzzia. We don’t even allow genocide here or stealing toilets any more.
Alison Rose
Don’t know who the assailant is yet, but JFC:
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
I think a big part of it rhetorically is that “This isn’t who we are” is just a bad way of saying it. We need a better rhetorical shorthand for something that doesn’t live up to our aspirations. Maybe something more like, “We should be better than this” or “That’s not the America we’re trying to build”, or something along those lines. Make it clear we’re describing the way we want things to be, not the way they actually are.
Sister Golden Bear
@James E Powell: There’s also a big difference between leaving of the country because you’re unhappy because of the election results vs. fleeing the country because you’re part of a persecuted minority who going to get genocided if you stay, and you might not be able to leave if you stay.
The trans genocide is already underway in Florida and numerous other Republican Red States — there’s been heart wrenching videos from trans people in Florida who just got their last hormone prescription because DeSantis has effectively outlawed trans healthcare for trans kids and adults.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Alison Rose:
Horrible. Thankfully he didn’t have a gun at least
twbrandt
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Hamtramck and Highland Park are both cities surrounded by the city of Detroit. Long ago, both existed outside of Detroit, but as Detroit grew and annexed land, those two cities resisted annexation and remained independent, even though they were eventually surrounded by Detroit.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
I actually don’t think that’s necessarily true. At the very least, a system like ranked choice voting eliminates some of the ways the Republicans have already found to create mayhem, e.g. sponsoring third party candidates to siphon away Democratic votes. Basically, the worse the system is, the easier it is to break it. Plurality elections are pretty bad to start with, so they’re very easy to disrupt. Ranked choice voting is inherently more resilient.
lee
@Jesse:
I’ve had this ‘conversion’ with one of the nutters:
Putin made Russia into something good. Reagan having caused the collapse of the Soviet Union which then became Putin’s Russia is also good.
No it doesn’t really make any sense.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
It’s Chicago proper. Just never thought that we would get a Mayor from the West Side.
Suzanne
@Roger Moore:
Agreed.
The first person is trying to say, “You, bigot, are being a shitty American right now, do better”, and maybe we need to just say that.
Well, don’t say exactly that, because I am not a nice person. But say something like that.
Jay
Lyrebird
@Alison Rose: Yeah that is awful! I am glad they’re okay.
@Sister Golden Bear: Thanks for keeping us posted on the horrors. I have been trying to think, this is even harder than getting one person out for a single health care treatment, like abortion care, because it is ongoing and Florida will now go after the parents even if we could organize a coast to coast visiting student program to shelter the kids.
I am very glad ACLU and NCTE and others are fighting the laws, but that is slow, so I sure hope there is some way for humans with a conscience to help the kids and their families whoare at risk right now!
dc
Why are this blog’s readers called Jackals? I checked the Lexicon and found nothing.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: Thanks for letting me know i can skip this interview. Fuck them.
Manyakitty
@Matt McIrvin: great, let’s crowdfund their tickets and yeet them outta here.
zhena gogolia
@Tom Q: I hate ranked-choice voting.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: So a little city inside the big city? Not a suburb
Okay, so I guess what I’m really asking is why you would never think there would be a mayor from the West Side. That was my neck of the woods growing up, so I don’t know how people in the city itself view the West Side.
Jay
@lee:
Vancouver BC to Moscow is $2400, economy.
Maybe buy them a one way ticket as a “gift”.
zhena gogolia
@Jesse: Putin pretends to be Christian and anti-gay.
zhena gogolia
@dc: Some (right-wing? or was it Glenn Greenwald?) blogger called us a pack of jackals at some point, and the label was embraced. The phrase was longer and very funny.
Jay
@Lyrebird:
LBGTQA is grounds for refugee status in Canada.
Just saying. Welfare sucks, but in a year, they can get residence status, 2 years citizenship.
jackmac
@rikyrah: Austin was once a suburb of Chicago, located immediately east of Oak Park. Predominately African-American, it has a beautiful park (Columbus Park), some stately homes and easy access to downtown via CTA Rapid Transit. It also has grinding poverty . I worked for a tiny newspaper in the neighborhood in the late 1970s and thought it might be the next area that White folks might seek to gentrify. That didn’t happen and Chicago’s longstanding racial animosities had a lot to do with it.
dc
@zhena gogolia: Thank you!
Jay
@zhena gogolia:
Putin pretends to be “family values”, rape, murder, genocide and the highest divorce rate in the world.
Math Guy
@zhena gogolia: While it is not “perfect” (Arrow’s Theorem), it is a harder system to game. I suspect that it makes it harder for truly extreme candidates to win.
West of the Rockies
Can’t say I recall encountering catfishncod here, but welcome their addition!
Yes, time to get busy living or get busy dying (Shawshank). Time to get to work on ’24.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
I did not read that David Wallace-Wells interview as MAGA-lite; it was however too critical of the early science-based guesswork driving the early response.[1] This, from the piece you linked, captures Fauci’s style well; typical very bright scientist (of the articulate variety):
[1] By early, I mean through March 2020. By end of March 2020, asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 spread had been established and literature surveys on masking had shown that any sort of masks for source control on asymptomatic infected people would be helpful, particularly for the R 2.5-3.0 virus variants then in circulation.
Anoniminous
@zhena gogolia:
“Snarling mass of vitriolic jackals” is what I remember but darned if I remember who called us that.
zhena gogolia
@Anoniminous: I can’t believe it’s not immortalized in the Lexicon. I tried googling but I’m not very good at that.
Gin & Tonic
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I wonder how he’s faring with learning Hungarian.
Gravenstone
Had to confirm for myself that this was actually a location within Chicago and not my initial reflex of Austin, TX!! Cuz that’d be one hell of a commute otherwise.
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
Fauci is pretty much a god,
And Anne Laurie is a Saint.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
He’s not, just yells American English louder.
What’s in his food??????
Suzanne
@Bill Arnold:
That because he’s describing something complex and shifting.
It makes me livid when that style of communication is criticized for not being clear. Like, if you don’t understand, ask follow-up questions until you get it.
Sometimes reality is complex.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
‘Modern’ Chicago Mayors:
Richard Daley the First
Richard Daley the Second
Bridgeport-South Side
Jane Byrne – North Side
Harold Washington – South Side , but Hyde Park
Eugene Sawyer – South Side, but Chatham
Rahm Emmanuel – North Side
Lori Lightfoot- North Side
You see a pattern here?
Brandon Johnson isn’t just from the West Side.
He’s from THE WEST SIDE.
Not the gentrified West Loop /Medical Campus West Side.
The honest-to-God WEST SIDE.
Most Chicagoans wouldn’t be caught in broad daylight in his neighborhood. It might as well be another country.
Jay
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Whelp. Sounds like quite a wormy can of worms has just popped open
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, good luck with that! I can usually learn enough phrases to be polite in countries where I don’t speak the language. Not in Hungary!
PJ
@Jesse: We had ranked choice in NYC for our mayoral election, and effectively, it knocked out the more liberal candidates (there were many running) and allowed the most conservative candidate, Eric Adams, to win. I’m not a fan of him or ranked choice. A run off, while more expensive, would likely have prevented Adams from winning.
Old School
@Anoniminous:
Church Lady refers to the commentators as “a snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals” in this thread from 2010. (Comment 155)
Perhaps that is it.
Cameron
@Gravenstone: That’s what Zoom is for.
PJ
@rikyrah: The mayor of New York lived in New Jersey when he ran.
Jay
@rikyrah:
I had BBQ there, once, it was great, Steamboat I think, Stop over. Paid a guy $5 to watch my (rental car) because he said it was “the custom”. No biggie, $5, paid more at OHare for parking, and that was just a carpark, nobody actually watching your car. Probably because it was an “in year” Mustang rag top, which I always got, because Corporate, and the Mustangs were the only ones at the time with CD players. Had to drive to Milwaukee after all.
Baud
@Old School: No, it predates that. WaterGirl did a history once.
M31
lol that’s one way to phrase it
raven
@Jesse: Austin IS Chicago.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Uhhh . . . I haven’t even gone to the link, but I saw that scene in the Borat movie!
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I know how to say “Good morning” and “Fuck your God” in Hungarian. My daddy taught me. True story.
(Slovak who went to Budapest to work when he was 16.)
zhena gogolia
@Old School: That sounds close — not sure if it’s the original phrase or not.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
(thread)
Redshift
@Alison Rose: I guess you can get a baseball bat through the security checkpoints at the House office buildings. This is what we get with the Right being enthusiastic that violence is justified if it’s against people of the wrong sort. I’ve probably met some of those staffers. Grrr.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: WOW.
Roberto el oso
@Jesse: it is indeed bizarre from a certain angle but even more bizarre is the defense of current-day-extremely-post-Communist Russia on the part of pseudo-leftists. The Right at least acknowledges that Russia has become fascist, hence their adoration of the place, but the pro-Russians who insist they’re progressive (at the Nation and elsewhere) seem in deep denial that the workers’ paradise no longer exists.
narya
@rikyrah: Yup.
To give the rest of you some context: In the 1920s, the social workers at the U of C (I think?) mapped distinct community areas throughout the city, and named them. A century later, the city continues to use these community area designations, and, largely, the boundaries, not least because there is a massive tranche of data by community area over a very long period of time. (You can also get a map of zip codes by community area, which is useful given that many federal designations, especially for community health centers, is by zip code.) It’s not perfect, because neighborhoods change over time, but it’s absolutely fascinating.
More to rikyrah’s point, the Austin neighborhood is the ONLY neighborhood in that list that isn’t gentrified. I think it helped the mayor make a very important point, which is that people in ALL neighborhoods want to be/feel safe, but the current approaches are not, and will not, work.
Jay
@Roberto el oso:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-putin-fascism-youth-1.6842657
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Hey WG,
I emailed you last Wednesday and last night to RSVP to this Saturday’s Zoom. Am I good? Am I supposed to receive a link? You didn’t respond
PJ
@Math Guy: If the field is large enough, ranked choice actually makes it easier for an extreme candidate to win, because they don’t need to gather anything close to a majority, just more than the next first ranked person. Most voters don’t have the time to learn everything important about every candidate when there are a dozen or more people running, and even if they have the time, the information is unavailable or difficult to get. Many voters give up before selecting their fifth favorite candidate.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How does that compare to what some unidentified informant claims Biden has done?
Baud
@PJ: Compared to what system? Not first-past-the-post.
JCJ
@Betty Cracker: That reminds me of a train ride I took just before Christmas in 1981 – Munich to Vienna. The train was quite crowded and I was in a compartment (Zugabteil – I think the English word is compartment) with five other people. The woman next to me was traveling to Budapest. She was reading a book and when I glanced at it there was this incomprehensible jumble of letters.
PJ
@Baud: First past the post with at least 50%, then a run-off if no one has at least 50%, would be way better, even if it is more expensive. If an “extreme” candidate gets at least 50%, then they aren’t really that extreme for the voting community. But, as we’ve seen, it’s not so difficult for an extreme candidate to get, say, 30% of the vote and win in ranked choice.
Old School
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It doesn’t strike me as likely that Donald would be willing to split $2M with Rudy. (Unless Rudy would only tell Donald that the person was paying $1M.)
Baud
@PJ:
That ignores the second and third choices people make. Are you saying Adams won because those were left blank in the NYC election?
ETA: Also, Adams has flaws, but I wouldn’t call him extreme.
JML
@Redshift: this was in the District Office, which would have substantially less security. (the only way for it to have any security at all is for it to be paid for by the member through their office fund allocation, which is pretty small)
Sadly, I think more and more Dems are going to have to be on alert for this kind of thing: the GOP under Trump has done nothing but enable violent attacks from right wing lunatics.
Obvious Russian Troll
@twbrandt: As you presumably know, Chrysler used to have its headquarters in Highland Park; I wonder how much that had to do with its resistance to annexation. It had been long engulfed before I became politically aware.
Highland Park was in sad shape well before Chrysler moved to Auburn Hills, much less the series of ownership changes and mergers and blah blah blah. From what I hear Hamtramck seems to be doing much better.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What? America’s Mayor? Mr. 9-11? I’m shocked – shocked, I tell you!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker:
That reminds me…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grA5XmBRC6g
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: “Lie to me, Professor! The truth is too complicated!”
Jay
@narya:
Never, still don’t understand that.
I lived in the SF Tenderloin in the 70’s, never felt in danger.
Walked through the Downtown East Side after midnight, in the 90″s and early Aughts, no problem.
Lived in NorKam in the mid aughts and the worst I had to deal with, ( despite media reports on crime), was noisy neighbors with single pane windows.
Even today, “The News” is saying I should be afraid of transit, because of 6 stabbings, ( 3 targetted) in 4 months. Ooga Booga. I take transit every day, for 3 hours. The worst I have ever had to deal with, is a drunk guy, attacking his Girlfriend at 5:30 am. ( construction workers intervened. The worst part was the 2 hours we had to hang around while cops took our statements.
OTOH, almost got mugged at knifepoint on Robson street in the daylight. You don’t want to enter a Robson street shop unless you have $1.5k in loose change.
Sure Lurkalot
@Sister Golden Bear: I am not a persecuted minority who is in imminent threat of genocide—though I do have 3 strikes (female, born Jew, atheist)—I would leave this country in a heartbeat if I could.
It’s the guns. I am utterly hopeless about that issue.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
The Lexicon is sadly out of date. AFAIK, it hasn’t been updated since the Obama administration.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Old School: Yeah, I’m gonna wait and see what the evidence is. Rudi is both a drunk and a crank, and I could see that conversation being more of plan he hatched than something trump had agreed to (not that he wouldn’t, probably would’ve told Rudi to talk to Eric or JR)
Jay
@Baud:
Missing “whistle bower”, missing “informant” who informed the “whistle blower”,………… the imaginary bodies are just piling up
cain
@Jesse: Conservatives have been going to Costa Rica.
Anoniminous
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wow.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
Just be very careful you don’t get this phrasebook.
cain
@Roger Moore: I dont like this as it turns it into an all or nothing kind of thing – and I feel like it would be coopted by right wingers.
Jay
@Sure Lurkalot:
Come to Canada, not Russia.
Jay
@Anoniminous:
My sexting with the wife is so bland,…….. we talk aboot, (yeah, Canadian) work and puppies,……..
narya
@Jay: I typically don’t feel in much danger, and have taken public transportation at all hours of the day/night. That said, I’m somewhat afraid of being caught in the crossfire, not necessarily of being a target myself, and I doubt I’m alone in that. Also, as a short, female-presenting person, that also makes me a bit more targetable
ETA: though, in one case, probably LESS targetable. Taking public transportation from the south side, alone, at 1:30 in the morning, a group of young men at the other end of the otherwise-empty car assiduously ignored me, and vice versa.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: There seems to be an instinctive tendency across the whole political spectrum, but especially on the right and especially with the religious right, to take stark, simple, unequivocal answers given in a tone of great certainty as a sign of trustworthiness.
Among scientists, that kind of thing sets off your Spidey sense. It’s a red flag of bullshit. If you’re reporting scientific results, you have to say exactly how certain or uncertain you are of them, and show your work, and report everything that might be a confounding factor. To a non-scientist all that is “weasel words”.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Only if they like the answers.
Scientists get a pass, but as a general matter, our side of the aisle does tend to use more wordy, explanatory narratives than people have patience for.
cain
I thought it was the south side of chicago that chicago folks were wary of? Of course, that was some decades back – did it get gentrified or was I just wrong the whole time?
James E Powell
@Anoniminous:
Did they mean the European vitriolic jackals or the African vitriolic jackals?
Math Guy
@PJ: That depends on how you summarize the results, e.g., Borda count vs. Condorcet. Now I’m going to have to go back and reread one of my game theory texts to get the details straight.
twbrandt
@Obvious Russian Troll: not only do I know that Chrysler used to be headquartered in Highland Park, I worked at the Chrysler HQ before it moved to Auburn Hills. I was there when Lee Iacocca was brought in to rescue Chrysler after Lynn Townsend and John Riccardo ran it into the ground.
ETA: yes, Hamtramck is doing better than HP. It has changed a lot – it is now majority Muslim, although the best Polish bakeries and delis are still in Hamtramck.
prostratedragon
@Tom Q: I echo this caveat because of the NYC example, and because we were potentially saddled with the same kind of thing recently in Chicago, where I think only Paul Vallas’s notoriety —significant negative partisanship there— saved us from having him sneak in over of a field of relative unknowns.
Jay
@narya:
It’s a completely different world, (sadly) when you are female or present as female.
I just don’t understand some of the “fear” that the media sells. Yeah, south side of Milwaukee, only “white guy” in THE Place for burittos, 2 am and I ask for “mild”. Really?
That’s not a news story.
EriktheRed
@Jesse: There was a time when wingnuts on a certain site I als went to talked about going to New Zealand, never mind they have socialized healthcare.
rikyrah
@cain:
South and West Sides.
dirge
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Shorter paragraph 96: Jack, Fani, please send subpoenas at your earliest convenience.
raven
Multiple people were shot and at least three killed in a shooting in Farmington, New Mexico, police said in a Facebook post.
Officers were involved in a shooting with a suspect, who was killed on scene, police said. A Farmington police officer and a New Mexico State Police officer were shot and are being treated for their injuries in the hospital. They are in stable condition.
“The suspect’s identity is unknown and there are no other known threats at this time,” police said in the post. “There are multiple civilian victims with at least 3 deceased.”
raven
@rikyrah: The Taylor Street Dukes!
Jay
As for Trump’s town hall, it’s unheard of for a network to give so much airtime to a sexual abuser who’s not being confirmed for the Supreme Court. – Andy Borowitz
Roberto el oso
@lollipopguild: “maybe we can get them to all move to Florida or Texas”
As a Texan who has worked his ass off on behalf of Dem politicians, who has protested in front of various court houses, police stations, RW rallies for going on 3 decades now, this is my knee-jerk response to statements like the above. Please try and remember that in both 2016 & 2020 Dem voters in Texas delivered the 4th largest number of pro-HRC, pro-Biden votes out of the 50 states. There are millions of us down here trying to fight the good fight. We are used to being shat on but it is disheartening when we get crapped on by alleged allies.
prostratedragon
@Geminid: “Although I sometimes wonder if it was a plot by political consultants to drum up more business.” 😇
Matt McIrvin
@Roberto el oso: There’s a big chunk of the US left that primarily frames itself in opposition to US foreign policy, whatever that might be. It made some sense that this would be a “left” position during the Cold War. Certainly made sense during the GWB administration. But the tendency persisted. On top of that, Putin has been producing propaganda specifically targeted at them for a long time, pushing his line as the thinking person’s alternative to the consensus of the Washington Blob.
cain
@rikyrah: oh ok – I think my dad got off on a ramp to ask for directions in south side and saw a stabbing and quickly got out of there with the rest of us in tow.
I grew about an 2 hours from Chicago off of I-65. So, I used to go to Chicago quite often but only in the downtown area.
Jeffro
@UncleEbeneezer: hmm
seems like sliiiiiightly bigger news than the fact that Durham found nothing, but I’ll take…BOTH!
Roberto el oso
@Matt McIrvin: agreed, all of these are excellent points. Thank you.
Ken
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Figures — Ken “Popehat” White just asked his followers what they’d like to hear about in his podcast this week. There’s a joke (law of nature?) that any time he does that, some major case is immediately reported.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: Austin is Chicago proper, as I recall. It’s the westernmost neighborhood in the city, ain’t it?
Mike in Pasadena
@Jesse: In my own case, it was not a lack of pride in country or self (whatever you may mean by lack of pride) that caused me to consider moving abroad when TFG was elected and four years later when TFG rallied a mob of violent stupid people to attack the Capitol. My considering moving abroad was one of self preservation, of fear I guess. As a gay man I feel personally the violent attacks against gays disguised in trans hatred even though I live in California. More Californians, because of the large population, had more Republican haters voting for TFG than many red states. When I was attacked recently for walking down the street for wearing a sun mask (quite different from a Covid prevention mask) merely because I recently had skin cancer surgery, really drove home the point that California is not some haven from the right wing crazies. Considering departure from the US can be motivated for reasons other than lack of “pride.”
rikyrah
@Miss Bianca:
It is. next stop west from Austin is Oak Park.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@twbrandt: Yeah I figured maybe the same thing happened in Chicago and maybe Austin was one of those Hamtramck type places.
cain
@Matt McIrvin: For good reason, our lifestyle here comes at a price and it is always because we’re propping up people in power in other countries that don’t have the best interest of the people in those countries.
We are constantly interfering in the affairs of nations that do not have the sophistication, money, and military to fend us off. I can’t remember a single instance of us interfering in a nation that actually was good for us in the long term other than Croatia.
You can look at Iran as the #1 example. You can thank Eisenhower for that. In general, every time a Republican takes over – our foreign policy goes to hell. I think the only time that wasn’t the case was when Ford was president.
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Q: Arrow’s Theorem is a result in voting theory that lists a few seemingly fairly uncontroversial desirable properties of a rank-order voting system, and then proves that you can’t have them all at the same time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
Of them, the one most likely to fail in a reasonable system is probably the one that says that given everyone’s preferences for candidate X vs. candidate Y, their other choices shouldn’t affect what the system gives as a result for X vs. Y. You’re always going to have the possibility of that kind of flip, unless you do something even more outrageous, like making one person a dictator, or failing to recognize even a unanimous preference.
But that’s not to say that none of these systems can be better than what we’ve got. They can be a lot better, especially if it comes to really fringey minor candidates spoiling things.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mike in Pasadena:
Sorry that happened to you
cain
@Mike in Pasadena: That’s why we need to all band together gay, non-whites, white allies, jews, muslims, hindus and even conservatives sects like the mormons – because they will be coming for us all.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This one seems interesting:
Emphasis added. Yeah, I always assumed they went after Clinton at least in part because they were jealous, but it’s good to have that confirmed.
Miss Bianca
@Alison Rose: There they go again. Against “members of Congress.” NO, dipshits – it’s against *Democratic* members of Congress!
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s not just in politics. I have a client who I just absolutely cannot get along with, because she can’t absorb technical detail and yet she wants to know why we have to do things a certain way. The answers to her questions (more accurately, the responses to her commands) are often deeply technical in nature. And she interprets me as argumentative, because I’m over here trying to explain constraints, using if/then language, and trying to explain trade-offs.
It’s making me miserable.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Huh. I had no idea. Is the west side considered more dangerous, or more black or more poor than the south side?
Roberto el oso
@cain: It’s also arguable that our foreign policy has historically been pretty shitty even when Dems are in the White House. Marginally less so than when the GOP is in charge perhaps, but not enough to make a difference to the citizens of the countries we meddle in.
Pete Downunder
We have ranked choice voting here in Oz, and it works really well. We have two major parties, Labor (leftish) and Liberal (very rightish) and a vibrant and sensible left leaning minority Green Party.The Australian Greens are what Labor here (or Democrats in the US) should be. Support for the little guy, taxing the rich, protecting the environment etc. Our elections (federal, state and local) are all ranked choice and voting is compulsory (a whopping AUD $20 fine for failing to vote). The ballots are all initially counted by hand at the polling booths with volunteers from all interested parties scrutinizing the count. I have served as a scrutineer and have been impressed by the diligence and honesty of all concerned. As a result of preferences the Greens now have both the Federal and State parliament seats where I live and we have hopes for the local election coming up. In the federal senate (much like US Senate) neither major party has a majority so the current party in government (Labor) has to negotiate with the Greens and independents.
Citizen Alan
@Jesse: The difference, as far as I can tell. is this: When people on the right lose an election, they talk about leaving the country because they are afraid the government might take their guns or give their job to. An immigrant or a woman. When people on the left lose an election they talk about leaving the country because they are afraid they will be rounded up and killed.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
More dangerous was the reputation. When I was growing up, there was a division between South Side and West Side Black folks. The West Side never recovered from the riots post-King assassination. My parents had serious discussions about her working on the West Side as a teacher. She had no fear of the West Side-she taught over there 35 years, and wouldn’t leave, even when offered ‘ better schools’ closer to our home. My father allowed me to go to High School on the West Side, as long as my mother took me everyday. Since I went to High School, the area around it has become part of the Medical Campus gentrification, but, even today,you can see the dividing line between gentrified West Side and not.
Birdie
@PJ: Australia runs all its elections, state and federal, using preferential voting, a form of ranked choice. You look at the politics of both countries and tell me: where do the extremists win more often?
Right now in Australia one big news story is that a conservative politician in one state has been expelled (from the conservative party) for attending an anti-trans rally where neo-Nazis showed up. Because she is a “distraction” from the issues voters care about. Would that happen in the US? Doubtful.
Ranked choice has other problems (concentration of the main political parties in the do-nothing middle) but it is not a formula for extremists to win, overall. If you think it is, you’ve misunderstood how it works.
Put another way, Adams won in NYC because enough people listed him as a 2nd or 3rd preference. Why they did that is the real question.
cain
I agree 100%. A lot of the times we continue to coddle dictators even with Democrats in charge. But most of the time, it’s the GOP. Here is one close to us Indian expats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971
50 miles from the capital of Pakistan in a war that Pakistan initiated – the U.S. threatened military strike forcing a retreat of the Indian army. The reason is that the U.S. thought India was in a informal alliance with the Soviet Union despite being part of the “non-aligned” country movement. It was decidedly an internal matter between two countries.
Nothing against the Pakistani people – they were ill served by their govt, as frequently Indians been as well due to the high level of corruption (a legacy of the Brits’s foreign policy) [I find it irritating that Indians will always take the side of the Brits in sports instead of Pakistanis, but of course legacies of civil wars and other hostilities can create that]
pat
I don’t understand the attraction of “ranked choice.” Does that mean I have to know something about all the candidates? We just had a school board election with about 10 candidates and it was not easy to read (online) what their views were. Finally I found someone who was involved with the local schools and they gave me four names….. Check, check. check, check. Done. Three of them won, as I recall.
My ranking is Democrat: YESSSSSSS
Republican: NEVER
pat
170th! Hope I didn’t kill the thread.
zhena gogolia
@Roger Moore: That struck me too.
MomSense
@Jesse:
Ranked choice would have helped us in quite a few races in 2022 where we had Independent spoilers.
Eduardo
@Cameron: It will probably take a few cycles or some major overreaching and/or scandal but I think it will happen.
They are attacking too many people, too strongly, too quickly because DeSanctis needs to win the primary. Presumably they will keep winning in the coming cycles and the base will keep clamoring for more assholeness. There is a limit to what people in a still free society can tolerate.
The abortion ban in particular is draconian and women are half the electorate. I thought that I was going to see a more combative answer to it but it seems people are too disconnected to what is going on in their local/state government. I also don’t know if middle class and up women don’t feel like this is going to affect them much because they will find a way to have an abortion when they need it? I am waiting to hear that there is a constitutional amendment question to go back to Roe status quo or even to raise the cut up period to 15 weeks or something. I hope this will mobilize people and open their eyes to how radical those people are. We will see.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
An important point with Arrow’s theorem is that it’s mostly theoretical. In practice, a well designed system will almost always work in a real world election. You have to get some staggeringly unlikely circumstances for the voting system to be the problem, especially when you have thousands or millions of votes.
Note, though, that this is for a well-designed system. IIRC, instant runoff voting, which is the most popular way of counting ranked votes in the real world, turns out to be one of the worst ways of doing it. In particular, IRV doesn’t meet the Condorcet criterion, meaning that it’s possible for one candidate to defeat every other candidate if you look at them pairwise and still lose the election.
Citizen Alan
@Jesse: Easy. Putin is not a communist or even a socialist. He is a kleptocrat. And since most republicans are fundamentally corrupt and crooked, they are perfectly fine living in a dictatorship run by kleptocrats because they think their natural saviness and ruthlessness will let them rise to the top.
trollhattan
@Birdie: I could see using that system for choosing homecoming king and queen. For public office? Cripes, no.
Our jungle primaries are bad, and complicated enough, when there might be three dozen candidates for a single office.
schrodingers_cat
I did contemplate moving to Canada when the unthinkable happened. I But in the end I decided against it and applied for naturalization instead. I turned in my application the evening before the 2017 inauguration.
prostratedragon
Deleted, should have finished narya’s comment, with which I agree. Community area data still have a lot of value.
Kelly
All of those plus state and local Judges nominated by the Governor and confirmed by the Legislature.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
Daaamn, girl. Not pulling any punches in this filing.
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Just super busy. I will be communicating with everyone soon.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No wonder that fucker was desperate for Trump to pardon his ass. May he be buried under the prison when all is said and done.
Citizen Alan
@PJ: I think the solution should just be ranked choice voting, but you only have to rank the choices that you actually care about. If there are 13 choices for mayor, I should not have to know enough about them all to accurately decide who should be my twelfth choice and who should be my thirteenth. Or even who should be my fourth or fifth. I mean, i’m voting straight democrat for the rest of my life, because all the rest are crooks and thieves and scumbags. But even if I were inclined to vote for a green or a dsa, under an IRV system, I would vote for the third party candidate and then the Democrat and then probably no one else.
zhena gogolia
@Roger Moore: It is full of gems.
Ohio Mom
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: There are two independent cities inside the City of Cincinnati, like little islands.
One is St. Bernard. They had a big P&G factory, until they didn’t. The factories got spun off so that tax stream still exists to some degree. Otherwise, it is a solid blue collar bedroom community.
The other is Norwood, which had a big GM car factory, until it didn’t. That land got recycled as retail. Otherwise, another mostly blue collar bedroom community.
Fun fact about Norwood, it was the model for Fernwood, where the TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was set. The line I remember most was when one character asked another if he was a practicing homosexual and the answer was,”I don’t have to practice, I’m quite good at it.” Very daring for the times.
How these cities avoided being eaten up by Cincinnati, I do not know.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, that’s horrifying. Holy shit.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
Understood, WG. Thanks
Matt McIrvin
@pat: Mostly it’s that people can vote for third-party candidates without necessarily spoiling the election and electing the candidate they hate the most.
catfishncod
Holy front page block quote, Batman!
I would say WaterGirl has honored me beyond words, but words are all I have to work with, so they’ll have to do. Usually, I post only when I have something really substantive to say, and that’s rare enough that I’m easy to miss (or ignore). So I’m very happy that everyone’s finding my words useful.
I listed off a dozen different tools and tactics that can be useful in fending off autocratic takeover. Arguing too much about the merits and anecdotal success or failure of one tool (ranked-choice voting) misses the point.
RCV is not One Weird Trick that can save democracy. There is no One Weird Trick that can save democracy. One Weird Tricks are for hucksters, shysters, kleptocrats and autocrats. We have to do lots of different things. Many of them will reinforce each other, as in Michigan. Some will work better in some places (Maine, Alaska) and not work for others (New York). And that’s okay. One size does not fit all.
What does need to fit is our solutions and our problems. Like designing a judiciary and SCOTUS that is robust against judge-shopping and the super-legislature trend. Why is it even possible to predict in advance which judge will be hearing a case, or to count votes regardless of fact or argument? Why can’t we have larger benches with randomized panels, like on some Courts of Appeals now, so you can never count on deck-stacking?
”Don’cha get me wrong / I just wanna know…”
Mister Sam
@Tom Q: I agree with you for the most part, but Eric Adams won the first round by a considerable margin.
Maybe if we had actual runoffs rather than IRV, then Garcia might have beaten him*, but FTPT wouldn’t have elected her.
A reason _I_ generally support FTPT is that it usually hurts the GOP a lot more than us. We lost 2 presidential elections (which I admit is huge), but never any statewide offices (at least in the 21st century). By contrast, FTPT has cost the GOP an average of one governorship AND one senate seat EVERY cycle since (and including) 2000.
*Re: NYC: Garcia ALMOST beat Adams in IRV/RCV. If it weren’t for Jumaane Williams encouraging folks to rank Adams and not Garcia (he didn’t forgive her for her suggeted vote-swap with Yang), Garcia would be mayor now.
Miss Bianca
@twbrandt:
Hamtramck is majority *Muslim* now? This wonderful world!
SiubhanDuinne
@Anoniminous:
I think it was our beloved Blogfather himself, in a long-ago profile someone wrote about him. Did a very quick search for the piece, but it’s not showing up for me.
Redshift
@JML:
Ah, I didn’t pay attention to that. That makes more sense, especially since I read it was a metal baseball bat, which wouldn’t be possible to get through security.
JaySinWA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have read about half of the court filing. There’s a blatant copy paste error in the list of Rudy’s companies. Proofreading wasn’t high on the list of prep for this filing.
I’m getting some Avenatti vibes from the lawyer. I’d wait and see if they produce the recordings and emails they claim to have. Some of the assertions are in the too good to be true (that they have physical evidence they can produce to back up the statements).
There are going to be shocking headlines. Let’s hope the lawyer isn’t grandstanding.
lowtechcyclist
Don’t know if this has already been posted, but:
Gun Owner Spends Another Disappointing Night Without Home Invasion
The Onion, of course.
Redshift
@Miss Bianca:
One article on it I clicked through to included an attack on a staffer for Rand Paul and one on a congresswoman, both of which occurred “in DC,” not in their offices, and there’s no evidence they were related to politics (or that the attackers even knew who they were.) So generalizing it is just mostly wrong, not completely wrong…
Baud
History of jackals in this thread.
Balloon Juice – Programming Note: Two Jackals Have Christmas Performances Online Today & Tomorrow (balloon-juice.com)
LNNVA
@H.E.Wolf: I agree with you that the work we need to do is not glamorous. Right now we in Virginia have an election coming up in the fall for both of our state houses. There is nothing glamorous about this election, but it is critically important. Virginia purposely has these elections in off years to reduce turnout from our side, and it often works. Mr. Youngkin is a wolf in sheeps clothing, the darling of the media. He is merely waiting to take both houses of our legislature this fall in order to outdo Mr. DeSantis and announce for president. Nothing would please the media more. Please, can we do something here on Baloon Juice to help us out this fall? Water Girl? Any ideas?
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Interesting, but I could have sworn it originally appeared in a front-page post that was quoting some blogger who called us that. It was someone of the ilk of Rod Dreher.
Sure Lurkalot
@Jeffro:
The fucker wrote a 300 page report with the conclusion being the original assumption and the media falls for it:
I’m guessing that DOJ didn’t close this operative’s special counsel assignment because it would be too political. Unfortunately, Durham was discredited months ago and was still able to publish this bullshit report under DOJ auspices. Instead of the coverup, a lot of people will believe that ‘ol Donny was railroaded by the FBI.
WaterGirl
@catfishncod: I don’t know that you read all the posts every day, so I’m glad to see that you caught this post!
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s more than that. It also means that someone can more accurately represent their preferences. The 2022 Alaska House race is a good example. Mary Peltola was obviously the favorite of left of center voters, but the right of center voters were split between Nick Begich and Sarah Palin. Peltola was attractive to enough Begich voters that she was able to win when he wound up third and his votes were split between her and Palin.
It’s actually an interesting case, because Begich probably would have won if he had managed to convince about 2500 Palin voters. That would have been enough to put him in 2nd instead of Palin, and the number of Palin voters who would rank Peltola ahead of Begich was probably very small. In either case, Palin’s inability to win over those Begich voters was what lost her the race.
Chief Oshkosh
@cain:
Yep. It’s stable, has expat enclaves (so you don’t have to learn anything new, like local culture and language), good medical (socialized, though for-fee for expats), other good socialized services, and lots of (relative to the expats) poor people who will do all the grunt work. And cheap(ish) beachfront or near real estate.
randal sexton
I volunteered a lot on the ca-10 2018 election and it did end up flipping the seat. But the jungle primary almost screwed it up. There were a bunch of dems and two rs. If the two rs had gotten the most votes there would have been no ds in the final. It worked out but was scary. So I’m a bit off on jungle primary
OverTwistWillie
Howz that?
cain
@Chief Oshkosh: I hope Costa Rica is not going to allow an infestation of these assholes on their beachfront property.
Bill Arnold
@catfishncod:
You have a very good eye. The 2017 prediction of future GOP insurrection upon Democratic Party attainment of power was prescient. Wrong about Alito back before his confirmation but most of us were.
These recent ones caught my eye, FWIW : -)
Thrice the brindled cat hath mewed.
And if I had to pick one GSV to hang out with, it would be the Sleeper Service. Pity ve probably wouldn’t agree.
Yep, used that (fictional!) ship to stir up trouble once. I’m fond as well of “Killing Time”, and “Grey Area”‘s style is a little too … familiar.
karen marie
@Roger Moore: I’m trying to understand why she stuck around after the first half dozen times
(By “she,” I mean Dunphy.)
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
I remember that and thought it was very brave.
Manyakitty
@karen marie: ew. Seriously.
Sandia Blanca
@Roberto el oso: Ditto to that, Roberto el oso. Especially in the blue cities, our elected county officials do all they can to broaden voter participation, only to be thwarted by the evil Republicans Abbott, Patrick, Paxton, et al. It would be great to have help from the B-J community.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wise caveats
Roger Moore
@karen marie:
You could ask the same about any abusive relationship. Abusers know how to make it difficult for their victims to leave. The lawsuit lays out several classic abuser behaviors: making the victim financially dependent by withholding pay, isolating her by having her move to New York and then keeping her at his home rather than letting her have her own place, etc. Given that she was in the middle of a lawsuit over a previous abusive relationship, she was probably extra vulnerable. She may have been financially vulnerable- who knows if her previous abuser let her keep any money, and the lawsuit was going to be expensive- and she was probably emotionally vulnerable, too.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Did you go to Whitney Young?
schrodingers_cat
@geg6: Thanks. That election was a wake up call for me.
Another Scott
@Ken: Speaking of Popehat…
Cheers,
Scott.
Ramona
@Matt McIrvin: Indeed, you are right! The essence of the Scientific Method is DOUBT…
JaySinWA
@Another Scott: Yes I am skeptical, but like the X-Files poster says “I want to believe”.
I hope Ms. Dunphy has a better lawyer than Stormy Daniels did.
Kristine
@twbrandt:
My mom was born in Hamtramck. Yup, very Polish. Interesting to see it’s changed.
Mike in Pasadena
@Citizen Alan: An excellent summary: leftists are afraid they will be rounded up and killed after someone like TFG is elected.
brantl
@cain: That’ll teach ’em. Costa Rica’s a shithole.
henqiguai
@zhena gogolia:
Yes yes yes, 4 days late. The “Snarling mass of vitriolic jackals” came from a supposed insult by that British expat gay Tory blogger whose name I suddenly can’t recall. Ah!!! Andrew Sullivan! Never read his drivel, but he was popular here.