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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#174426: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:45:07 AM

[up][up] Factory workers in the rust belt are probably the weakest link in Trump's coalition, and one that he desperately needs to retain to win reelection in 2020.

[up] Hopefully those people won't just go back to not voting. Which, honestly, among union voters, was probably a more common reaction to the 2016 election than voting for Trump. Weak turnout among parts of the democratic coalition considered to be locked down (southern minorities and union workers) was a major part of Clinton's defeat.

edited 15th Feb '17 10:46:33 AM by CaptainCapsase

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#174427: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:47:45 AM

Pretty sure nothing short of a miracle is going to resort in Dems taking the House. The GOP has a sheer numerical advantage in that regard, because blue territories are a few small, heavily concentrated clusters while red territories are countless wide, sparsely-populated expanses. There are a lot more rural districts than urban ones, which is why voting by district favors Republicans while popular vote favors Democrats.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#174428: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:48:04 AM

That's very true. But hopefully their anger at Trump, and the Democrats responding to their concerns better, will get them engaged again.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#174429: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:48:53 AM

[up][up] The senate map is also quite dismal looking. Governors' manors and state legislatures on the other hand...

edited 15th Feb '17 10:48:59 AM by CaptainCapsase

iflewaway someone from somewhere Since: Dec, 2016
someone
#174430: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:49:25 AM

Don't forget how effective conservative propaganda is.

something
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#174431: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:51:42 AM

The reason American democracy is flawed: we gave the right to vote to a square mile before women or minorities got it.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#174432: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:52:30 AM

Pence's end goals suck, but Cruz actually wants the end of the world to happen. It's awful, but someone who will be awful to LGBT people is better than a man who will both be awful to LGBT people and who will deliberately try to arrange things so the end of the world will happen. I wrote a paper on Ted Cruz once, and one thing I found is that his father actually preached once that if it won't happen on its own, the Gog and Magog prophecy (the Dominionist interpretation has a ton of countries, including Ethiopia of all places, but not including Iran, invading Israel and failing miserably) should be deliberately triggered to essentially force the end of the world.

I know, I know I've let you down
I've been a fool to myself
I thought that I could
live for no one else...

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
TrashJack Confirmed Doomer from beyond the Despair Event Horizon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Confirmed Doomer
#174433: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:52:55 AM

@Gilphon: So, then we (and by "we", I mean "anyone who has the power to do so and is also not on Trump's side") have to somehow make him Brainwashed And Sane. Or find a way to make him convince his base to never vote again, ever.

Where's Project MKULTRA when we actually need it?

edited 15th Feb '17 10:57:52 AM by TrashJack

"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionary
Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#174434: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:56:59 AM

We'd better hope Trump stays incompetent. If we get a shooting war with somebody Trump might manage to get stuff like Martial Law rewritten so we don't get an election on National Security grounds.

I'm sorry, but it's not even been a month and if my agenda were the same as the GOP's seems to be, I'd get mired in a bunch of incompetent controversies to throw the wool over everyone's eyes, sacrifice the careers of a bunch of my closest friends who are totally on board with doing it and acting like it's a bad thing, then bring in some real death cult people who are willing to shoot up a few cities. What you should be doing is looking for ties to mercenary groups and whether some of those factories Trump built in other countries don't have paper trails hiding weapons rather than textiles and the like. Considering he likes to hide things, he's probably cooked the books and stashed some nasty things.

Or else we really did vote in Caligula.

DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#174435: Feb 15th 2017 at 10:59:44 AM

I'm 100% Positive that, short of serious cheating and voter intimidation, the Democrats are going to take over the House. There is so much anger at Trump right now, and at several Republican Representatives. The anger of 2016-2018 is certainly worse then the anger of 2010-2014. Combining this anger with the incompetency of Republican Congressmen, I can easily see the Dems taking 30+ Seats; they did it in 2006.

iflewaway someone from somewhere Since: Dec, 2016
someone
#174436: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:00:27 AM

[up] [up]Trump doesn't seem clever enough to plan something that elaborate.

Bannon, however, has all but admitted that his plan is to distract the media with petty scandals.

edited 15th Feb '17 11:08:40 AM by iflewaway

something
TrashJack Confirmed Doomer from beyond the Despair Event Horizon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Confirmed Doomer
#174437: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:06:20 AM

[up][up] In 2006, the Voting Rights Act had not yet been gutted like a fish, and the Congressional districts were nowhere nearly as badly gerrymandered as they were post-2010.

"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionary
Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#174438: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:07:00 AM

Everyone's always looking for the competent ones. You can bet if Trump had seemed fairly sane, he probably would have lost on the grounds that he really couldn't be any better than the politicians. It's the crazy ones who sucker punch you. So I'm going to wait and see. I wouldn't count Trump's intelligence out yet. He might have just been hiding it so he could pull off the ultimate sucker punch and kill everybody.

He's always come back from his setbacks. Every time he lost money he wound up with more. I think we're being played.

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#174439: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:11:04 AM

538 says that if Trump's approval rating is in the 40s in 2018 (a strong assumption, because who knows what'll happen in the next two years), the Dems can expect to gain seats, but there's huge margin of error when it comes to how many seats. Anything from 7 to 73 seats is plausible, although gerrymandering weighs things in favour of fewer seats. But not by enough to make things unworkable- we're also looking at popular vote gain somewhere between 2 and 18 points- and we need a gain between 6 and 9 points to overcome gerrymandering.

edited 15th Feb '17 11:11:56 AM by Gilphon

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#174440: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:11:23 AM

I'd also look at Senate elections. As noted in previous cycles such as 2014, oftentimes you end up with a fair amount of "close" elections that then tip over into an identical direction that reflects the general sentiment. I also wonder how much psychological resistance these 40% have.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#174441: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:11:37 AM

Speaking of the chances of Dems getting the House in 2018, according to 538: there is a relation between the lack of popularity of the president's party and house gains by the opposition, but the margin of error of +/-33 seats, with Trumps current approval ratings that could mean Dems getting between 7 and 73 seats. But on average, presidential approval rating moves 9% between inauguration ad mid -terms, so if Trump's goes down to 31%, Dems could be looking at gains of 53 seats with that margin of error (my shitty maths says: as low as 20 or as high as 86 new seats).

Tl;Dr: too early to say anything definitive, but if Trump's approval go down a lot and the dems play their cards right, they could maybe, with enough look and the stars aligning right have a shot.

[up][up][nja]

edited 15th Feb '17 11:12:28 AM by IFwanderer

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#174442: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:21:05 AM

So, to summarize, plausible results range from +86 to -6 for the Dems, with +24 being what they need to get a majority. It's no where near a sure thing, but the odds are in their favour.

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#174443: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:22:54 AM

He's always come back from his setbacks.

He more or less seemed immune from them during the election. Nothing sunk him despite all odds, it was uncanny honestly, like he was a character in a story that had the power to alter the story at will.

Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#174444: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:32:11 AM

Exactly.

I think the reason I keep harping on about the bad that COULD happen is that I'm sick and tired of this world facing down the same. old. shit. every single time. Self absorbed Pavlovian bad guys whose entire motivation can be summed up as "What I'm doing feels good and I think I am going to be rewarded by somebody for doing it." That's IT. Their entire motivation summed up right there. It feels good. There's nobody on top saying "I know things are going to get really fucking bad for a while, and a lot of you are going to die, but when you're on the other side things are going to be soooo much better for all of us, yourself included." It's all just . . . one-note and stupid, and the fact enough people keep falling for it while the others can't do anything to render those suckers impotent just does not bode well for us as a species.

Sure, we keep cleaning up the messes, but we need a new class of bad guy who actually has a point beyond whining that he hasn't gotten enough attention.

TheRoguePenguin Since: Jul, 2009
#174445: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:32:26 AM

[up][up] He doesn't have the benefit of an opponent this time. When Hillary was in the race, he could count on news about her changing the conversation. Now it's just him and the press is clearly ticked off.

edited 15th Feb '17 11:33:29 AM by TheRoguePenguin

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#174446: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:33:30 AM

[up]x3: The only character who comes with as much unearned or inexplicable teflon is Palpatine.

edited 15th Feb '17 11:33:43 AM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#174447: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:35:55 AM

During the primary, we were warned not to get complacent and assume Trump beaten until the votes were actually in and someone else took the nomination.

During the election, we were warned not to get complacent and assume Trump beaten until the votes were actually in and someone else took the Presidency.

You'll forgive me for not getting complacent and assuming Trump beaten until his ass receives conviction in an impeachment hearing.

This is not the third act of a heroic epic. The underdog hero is not about to arrive in the nick of time and save the world. We must remain vigilant until the danger has passed and not let down our guards one second before.

edited 15th Feb '17 11:38:03 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Journeyman Overlording the Underworld from On a throne in a vault overlooking the Wasteland Since: Nov, 2010
Overlording the Underworld
#174448: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:42:17 AM

And if he's smart and does have hired soldiers, he'd have them pre-told that all of this was going to come to pass and that his conviction would be the word to go. Everybody has computer access. They'd know who to hit without Trump telling them.

TheHandle United Earth from Stockholm Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
United Earth
#174449: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:42:58 AM

"What I'm doing feels good and I think I am going to be rewarded by somebody for doing it." That's IT. Their entire motivation summed up right there. It feels good.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#174450: Feb 15th 2017 at 11:51:36 AM

Yeah, trump have the luck of facing hilary(who dosent have the "yes we can/make america great again" charm and tons of propaganda against her) and is outsider status, now he is alone and he can relies in that anymore, hell most of is suporter since to be stuck in the "HILARY/OBAMA DID IT!" or "SHUT UP AND DO WHAT WE SAID!" and is wearing them down little by little.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"

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