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

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#258426: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:14:37 AM

I think propaganda should be avoided and demonising the wealthy is straight out of Stalin's book

Propaganda is crucial to any political movement, most people are not interested in sound analysis and thus it's essential to getting them interested. Keep in mind that propaganda may be a negative term the most effective propaganda is that which is mostly or entirely true, so we hardly need to mislead anyone when our policies actually are good for everyone.

Furthermore, it's silly to act as if demonizing the wealthy makes us like Stalin, they are not innocent powerless Kulaks that we're calling to purge. They're powerful people who hoard their wealth and abuse our tax code to avoid paying their fair share, it's perfectly fair to target them and tax them to fund programs to benefit the nation.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 23rd 2018 at 10:15:21 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#258427: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:23:38 AM

One thing I want to see in 2020 is a gentleman's agreement in the primary. Colorado did one this year: an agreement was made between gubernatorial candidates that they'll campaign their hardest, they'll debate fiercely, but under no circumstances is any Democrat to run attacks against another Democrat.

Because every time we do that, the Republicans sweep those attacks up off the primary floor and recycle them for the general.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:23:57 AM

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Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#258428: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:24:41 AM

I concede to your point that taxing the wealthy would benefit the nation,especially since most of them probably accumulated their wealth through avoiding taxes in the first place.

Though those keen to hold on to their wealth aren't going go quietly,especially if they're well connected with other friends who happen to be very good at influencing public opnion,and of course politicians through lobbying

Edited by Ultimatum on Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:26:29 AM

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#258429: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:25:33 AM

Technically they could just reform healthcare and would end with MORE money without even the need for additional funds. Taxing from the top is more important in the context of government programs and investments into the economy.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#258430: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:26:33 AM

Though those keen to hold on to their wealth aren't going go quietly,espically if they're well collected with other friends who happen to be influential

Yeah, that is the problem right there. We call those people "Republicans" and it's a bit of a fight to get them properly taxed.

But it's a battle we, as a nation, literally cannot afford to lose.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:27:05 AM

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unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#258431: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:39:54 AM

Also somethig I have notices is this individualist philosophy US have see taxes as THE MAN getting into your pocket specially if you dont care.

That and people really think individual effort are better to a nation as a whole which is why they respone better to ti twhen is some wealthy donor who give money for some reason.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#258432: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:41:55 AM

Reminds me of how during World War 2 they used a Disney cartoon to convince people to pay their taxes by pointing out it was for the war effort "Taxes to bury the Axis"

Obviously you couldn't use similar reasoning now ,though knowing the current Government would probably try to claim taxes were helping to fight terrorists or some crap,or use a scapegoat

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#258433: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:43:35 AM

Also somethig I have notices is this individualist philosophy US have see taxes as THE MAN getting into your pocket specially if you dont care.

That and people really think individual effort are better to a nation as a whole which is why they respone better to ti twhen is some wealthy donor who give money for some reason.

Quite, there is this narrative of rugged individualism which breeds narcissism and deadens social responsibility. That's how you can get privileged individuals talking about how taxation is theft and they shouldn't need to pay anything to the government! When their children are educated by government paid schools and their business is only possible because of government maintained infrastructure.

Thankfully Republican hostility to social programs and government investment in the public good seems to be failing, obviously, there are still people who believe it but it has solidly failed to take root amongst Millenials.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#258434: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:43:42 AM

"One thing I want to see in 2020 is a gentleman's agreement in the primary. Colorado did one this year: an agreement was made between gubernatorial candidates that they'll campaign their hardest, they'll debate fiercely, but under no circumstances is any Democrat to run attacks against another Democrat.

Because every time we do that, the Republicans sweep those attacks up off the primary floor and recycle them for the general."

I'm 100% for something like this. When Democrats and progressives tear each other down, Republicans win.

"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."
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#258435: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:46:53 AM

I second this idea, we can't afford to be pointlessly fighting each other when there are Republicans to oppose. Obviously, there should still be competition but that can be done in a manner that doesn't get nasty and doesn't help the Enemy.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#258436: Oct 23rd 2018 at 7:58:27 AM

I finished early voting here in Texas. I originally planned to do so on yesterday, but I had to work and knew I was off today.

I voted straight Democrat as I want Cruz, Patrick, and Paxton out of their respective positions. I did have to bite my tongue and vote for the incumbent Republican for a judge position since it was between a Republican and Libertarian.

Also voted "for" my local community college's bond issue.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#258437: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:22:00 AM

"That's how you can get privileged individuals talking about how taxation is theft and they shouldn't need to pay anything to the government!"

Kinda, I call this goverment a la carte, the idea that you can only suport govertment in parts as long is related to you, I guess how trumo got part of the votes.

"there should still be competition but that can be done in a manner that doesn't get nasty and doesn't help the Enemy. "

Also as long we dont enter into tribal soport of the "a bad dems is better than a rep" because otherwise that would let us into dying hills like roy moore was for the republicans.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#258438: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:24:42 AM

Quite, there is this narrative of rugged individualism which breeds narcissism and deadens social responsibility. That's how you can get privileged individuals talking about how taxation is theft and they shouldn't need to pay anything to the government! When their children are educated by government paid schools and their business is only possible because of government maintained infrastructure.

Eeyup. It's all part of the Randian "Bootstraps" economic philosophy, whereby all a person needs to succeed is to pull himself up by his bootstraps and work hard.

Named for the phrase "pull one's self up by their bootstraps", which describes a ridiculous idiot too stupid to realize that what he is trying to do (lift himself off the ground by tugging upwards on his bootstraps) is impossible.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#258439: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:26:14 AM

[up][up]Except it's often a case where the bad Democratic candidate is still better in just about every way than the Republican candidate. On issues, character, etc.

I've yet to see any high profile case where the choice was between a bad Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate who was actually principled, cared about social issues, wasn't engaging in racist dogwhistles, and was willing to oppose Trump and/or the party line.

Edited by M84 on Oct 23rd 2018 at 11:28:21 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Friendperson Since: May, 2018
#258440: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:35:19 AM

[up] Because at that point, they're no longer a republican.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#258441: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:37:34 AM

Pretty much. New Gingrich got the ball rolling on hyperpartisanship in the USA, and Trump was the final nail in the coffin of the veneer of compromise and respectability the GOP once had.

Disgusted, but not surprised
BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#258442: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:38:08 AM

I did have to bite my tongue and vote for the incumbent Republican for a judge position since it was between a Republican and Libertarian.
Only so much you can do, unless you're going to try and run for the position yourself?
I've yet to see any high profile case where the choice was between a bad Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate who was actually principled, cared about social issues, wasn't engaging in racist dogwhistles, and was willing to oppose Trump and/or the party line.
When was the last time you saw a Republican who could meet even half those criteria?

With the planning underway for the 2020 election, Kamala Harris is proposing a $500/month tax credit for the middle class, paid for mainly by removing all of Trump's tax breaks on the rich.

    Full article text 
Emphasis mine. Some graphics at the link.
Sen. Kamala Harris is probably running for president. So, like other Democrats probably running for president, the Senator from California has decided to start rolling out some moonshot policy ideas that might endear her to the Democratic primary electorate. Last week, she introduced a giant tax credit called the “LIFT the Middle Class Act.” It would essentially send up to $500 each month to working families. It’s not a universal basic income. But it’s as close as we’ve seen to one from a serious 2020 prospect.

There are a couple of major criticisms you could make about Harris’s approach, though. One is that it leaves out both the neediest Americans and the upper-middle class, which might make it politically untenable while at the same time failing to offer help to those who need it most. The second is that it’s just a bit unwieldy.

As you’d expect from such an ambitious proposal, the LIFT Act has a big-honking price tag: Though Harris hasn’t produced a formal estimate, The Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey ballparks the cost around $200 billion a year. The Senator would pay for it by levying a fee on large banks and repealing much of the $1.5 trillion tax cut Donald Trump signed last year, which disproportionately benefited high-income households and corporations. That’s the main message here: Republicans have decided to blow Washington’s budget on the wealthy. Harris would rather take that money and spend it on the middle class. But the bill also signals an important shift among mainstream Democrats, who seem to be getting more comfortable with the idea of unapologetically mailing people money.

Here’s how the LIFT Act would work. The bill creates what’s known as a refundable tax credit, meaning workers can claim it even if they don’t owe any money to the IRS. The credit matches each dollar a household earns, up to a maximum of $3,000 for singles and $6,000 for married couples. Then it levels off, before gradually dropping to zero for those making six figures.

For the visually inclined, here’s a graph of its structure, courtesy of the Tax Policy Center. It kind of reminds me of something out of the De Stijl movement.

Fundamentally, it’s more or less an update of the Earned Income Tax Credit, the $70 billion per year program that’s served as one of the most important anti-poverty tools of the past 30 years. The EITC nudges poor parents into the workforce by offering them a nice cash bonus that often tops what they would have actually owed in taxes, making low-wage jobs more worthwhile. Currently, it can boost household incomes by as much as $6,431. But workers have to wait for their tax refund in order to get the money, which can set them up for a cycle of financial feast and famine over the year. The LIFT Act’s big innovation is that it would let families take their tax credit as a monthly payment. So singles could look forward to $250 every thirty days or so; couples could get $500. It would also cover millions more people, since its benefits zero out at $100,000, far higher than the EITC’s limit of around $55,000 for a family of three.

Harris wouldn’t eliminate the EITC, however. Families could claim both.

Again, just a few years ago this kind of a plan would have been an absolute no-go for Democrats, who have scarring memories of how conservatives demonized the old cash-welfare program as a hand-out for lazy single parents. Even if the whole thing is still couched as a tax-credit, it’s, in reality, a movement back towards just giving people money.

One disadvantage to Harris’s approach is that it would make our opaque, hard to navigate welfare state even more complex. Aside from the EITC, families can also claim the Child Tax Credit, a partially refundable tax credit that now provides up to $2,000 per kid, but is only available to households with at least $2,500 of income. It’s not clear that stacking on yet another tax credit with a elaborate schedule of phase-ins and phase-outs—even one that sends workers a nice check each month—is ideal, when you could just supersize and modernize the EITC itself. That’s the tack some other Democrats have tried; Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna released a bill last year, for instance, that would pump another $1.4 trillion into the program over a decade.

It’s also a little odd to create a massive new social welfare program that does nothing for the group that arguably gets most short-changed by the current system—people who don’t work. As economist Robert Moffitt has documented, the U.S. now spends more per-household helping the working poor than it did in the 1980s, but much less on most severely impoverished families. Much of that has to do with the government’s shift from supporting households with cash welfare to emphasizing tax credits. Families need income to qualify for either the EITC or Child Tax Credit. Harris’s bill would do more for poor families than those programs, since its benefits phase in quicker. But it still excludes most households that lack a wage earner. (Students who receive Pell grants could qualify).

The fact that Harris does leave out the very poor suggests she is still trying to avoid having the program labeled as a handout. The bill has plenty of other political liabilities, though. We’re talking about a piece of legislation with a potential thirteen-figure cost that offers zero benefits to families that make more $100,000. In other words, the credit excludes around 29 percent of households—and it’s the 29 percent that are most likes to vote. It doesn’t help matters that Harris’ idea to fund the legislation could end up raising taxes on some families that earn low six figures, since they did benefit, on average, from Trump’s cuts.

All of this raises a question: If the pricetag is going to be so hefty anyway, why not at least try proposing something that benefits all middle class families and even those without any income? To take just one idea, Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project has been promoting the idea of a European-style, universal child allowance as a way to cut poverty for years. It’s the type of approach that could conceivably be an easier to sell than the one Harris came up with—and could even do more good.

Personally I am still a fan of figuring how to get UBI into the US public consciousness, and this sounds like a baby step on the way. Plus if she gets it passed, then later down the road we can "compromise" with the Republicans by merging it with EITC and CTC the way the article suggests.

And for the midterms and the 2020 election, an article on where voter suppression efforts are gaining and losing ground and why.

    Full article text 
Emphasis mine. No graphics in this one though.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump threatened prosecutions against nonexistent voter fraud, a message likely aimed at intimidating voters and stopping some from voting. With Trump’s heightened rhetoric and a seemingly increasing number of stories about voter suppression around the country, it is worth asking: Has voter suppression actually gotten worse in the 2018 midterm election season? Or are we just hearing about it more thanks to the hyperpolarized political environment? The truth depends on which state you are talking about.

In many parts of the U.S., even in many Republican states, registering to vote and voting is becoming easier. But in some key Republican states, Supreme Court decisions have allowed states to put up new hurdles for voting. Just ask Native Americans in North Dakota, black voters in Georgia, or Latinos in Dodge City, Kansas. Whether or not these hurdles actually affect election outcomes, they are outrageous, unjustified, and a drain on state resources.

In some ways we are really talking about two Americas. In one part of America, voting is getting easier. Many blue states, and even some red ones, have moved to adopt automatic voter registration. Many red and purple states have much more generous periods of early voting than blue states; early in-person voting started Oct. 10 in Ohio, yet does not exist at all in New York. And both red and blue states have moved to adopt online voter registration, which is a convenience for voters and avoids errors in data entry. Other bipartisan reforms include the sharing of information across states through the ERIC database to avoid duplicate voter registrations.

That is all good news, and it is often ignored in the fight over voter fraud and voter suppression. Such actions deserve praise and support as election officials and legislatures do their jobs to ensure that all eligible voters can easily cast a ballot that will be fairly counted.

But there’s the other part of America too. There’s North Dakota, which changed its voter identification law after the razor-thin election of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in 2012 to make it harder for Native American voters living on reservations and lacking a residential street address to be able to vote. There’s Georgia, where Secretary of State (and current gubernatorial candidate) Brian Kemp has been holding for administrative review up to 53,000 voter registration cards for failing to have an exact match (like a missing hyphen) between the official record of a person’s name and the name appearing on the registration card. And there’s Dodge City, Kansas, a Latino-majority city with only a single polling place for 27,000 people—a polling place that was recently moved out of town and a mile from public transportation for the 2018 midterm elections.

How have these jurisdictions been able to get away with this? To a large extent, we can blame the Supreme Court for failing to offer strong protections for the right to vote in the last decade. In 2008, the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board upheld Indiana’s strict voter identification law against a challenge which argued that the law violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. In 2013, the court in Shelby County v. Holder struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of discrimination in voting (mainly in the South, including Georgia) to get federal approval before making changes to voting rules. Before Shelby County, those states could not move or close a polling place without showing that the change would not make protected minority voters worse off. Now self-interested officials in those states can act—and, in the case of Georgia, are acting—with impunity.

Since Crawford and Shelby County, and especially since the election of the first black president in 2008, things have gotten much worse. A recent Vice report found that “in the years following the Shelby decision, jurisdictions once subject to federal supervision shut down, on average, almost 20 percent more polling stations per capita than jurisdictions in the rest of the country. There are now 10 percent more people per polling place in the formerly-supervised areas than in the rest of the country.”

Kansas was not subject to federal oversight, so when the state closes polling places or takes other actions that can disenfranchise voters, it takes a lot of legal resources to try to make things right again. Voter protection groups have been spread very thin, as Kristen Clarke of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told me in a recent episode of the Election Law Blog podcast.

Or take voter ID laws. More states have passed ever stricter voter identification laws. Although courts have required some states to make changes to their laws to ensure that burdened voters are not fully disenfranchised, this softening is only a partial measure.

Consider the situation in North Dakota. The state, which is the only one without voter registration, recently tightened its rules for producing proof of identification in order to be able to vote. One must show election officials proof of a residential street address. This law burdens Native American voters on tribal lands, who often do not have street addresses.

A federal district court put the law on hold as discriminatory, but an appeals court reversed that ruling and the Supreme Court refused to step in. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissenting for herself and Justice Elena Kagan, believed the law would likely cause voter confusion, although she noted that “the unchallenged portion of the injunction permitting the use of more informal supplemental documents somewhat lessens this concern” for about 18,000 North Dakota voters who could be disenfranchised, including more than 2,000 Native American voters.

In the surviving portion of the district court’s injunction is a ruling that allows tribal authorities to create tribal identifications with residential addresses for use in voting. At least one of the tribes plans to station representatives at all polling places, ready to print tribal identification cards on the spot. North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger has been noncommittal about how the state would treat such a plan.

And what about those 53,000 would-be voters—70 percent of whom are black—whose registration cards are now in the “pending” file at the Georgia secretary of state’s office? Those voters, if they are aware of it, can go to their polling place with a voter ID that is a “substantial match” with the voter registration information on file. The question of how “substantial match” will be determined, though, will vary from polling place to polling place depending on the decision of a deputized registrar trained by Kemp’s office, causing the potential for confusion and racial bias.

Meanwhile, in Dodge City, a motivated organizer could run buses on Election Day to take voters outside the city limits to help them exercise their franchise. Is anyone going to step up to do this?

Ultimately, it’s possible to claim that these voters are not literally disenfranchised because if they go over the right hurdles, they will be able to cast a ballot. But in order to exercise that franchise, they have to be aware that they have that right—and not stay home because they think they aren’t registered, or can’t vote, or won’t have transportation to the polls—and they have to jump through the precise right hoops.

All of this is being done to stop a phantom amount of voter fraud. I’ve been pointing out for the better part of this decade that voter identification fraud is virtually nonexistent. The evidence that voter fraud is a major problem has not gotten any stronger. A federal court strongly rejected a claim of mass noncitizen voting after a full trial in Kansas in a suit involving fraudulent fraud squad team captain Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and candidate for Kansas governor. The federal district court considering the residential address requirement in North Dakota concluded that “although the theoretical possibility of voter fraud exists with every election nationwide, the record before the Court has revealed no evidence of voter fraud in the past, and no evidence of voter fraud in 2016.” The state did not even contest this finding in the appeal that it won—it didn’t have to.

Given the workarounds to these voting hurdles and the vagaries of turnout, we cannot say whether these laws will swing Heidi Heitkamp’s re-election chances in North Dakota or help Brian Kemp or Kris Kobach win office. Sure, Democrats want to focus on that point, because they care who wins.

But the focus on outcomes obscures a fundamental point. These laws are always unacceptable, whether or not they swing elections. If the state is going to put a hurdle in front of voters who wish to cast a ballot, it should offer a good reason for doing so. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the states are not really even trying to offer those reasons anymore.

It’s outrageous, and it deserves everyone’s condemnation. It takes resources away from campaigning and get-out-the-vote efforts. It undermines the equality and dignity of each voter.

One day, maybe we won’t have two Americas, but a single America, where every eligible voter will be able to easily register and cast a ballot that will be fairly and accurately counted. One might have expected we would have had that by 2018.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
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Lost in Space
#258443: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:39:14 AM

On the other hand, there are still Democrats who talk and act like moderate Republicans, such as Manchin. The excuse is that they're in highly red districts and have to behave that way to stay in office and keep a much worse person out of their seat.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#258444: Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:40:57 AM

[up]Even in Manchin's case, it's a situation where his GOP opponent would likely be worse in every respect, at least from our POV.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Ludlow Since: Apr, 2013
#258445: Oct 23rd 2018 at 9:01:57 AM

Has anyone seen the New York Times' front page? Its filled with articles talking about house races becoming increasingly competitive and Democrats possibly losing ground. It very concerning, my stomach is all tied in knots.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#258446: Oct 23rd 2018 at 9:04:14 AM

My first thought is to wonder whether that's just then trying to invent a horse race where there isn't one. We got that in 2016, too, iirc.

Idahoans are voting early. Here’s turnout so far, & a tip to skip lines in Boise

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/election/article220431025.html

A rundown on voter turnout and early voting in Idaho. They're looking at a 70% turnout, the highest for midterms in 40 years, while prior midterms were between 56-61%.

My workplace will have early voting this coming Friday so I'll be taking advantage of that, even if we're so Red that our chance of flipping the local House seat is 1% and out governor candidate's odds are 1 in 20, going by that 538 article linked a while back.

Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 23rd 2018 at 10:10:20 AM

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#258447: Oct 23rd 2018 at 9:07:10 AM

I'd rather have a real Democrat than Joe Manchin.

But I'd rather have Joe Manchin than a Republican.

Better the guy who votes with us 20% of the time than one who votes with us 0% of the time.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#258448: Oct 23rd 2018 at 9:14:12 AM

Manchin throws off the Senate math because even if we were to somehow win enough seats to claim a 51-49 margin, he can vote with the Republicans and throw it to Mike Pence as the tiebreaker. It's extremely frustrating.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#258449: Oct 23rd 2018 at 9:39:52 AM

Manchin throws off the Senate math because even if we were to somehow win enough seats to claim a 51-49 margin, he can vote with the Republicans and throw it to Mike Pence as the tiebreaker. It's extremely frustrating.

I will point out that Manchin arguably saved the ACA.

He may be a probable scoundrel and reprobate but he votes with us when it counts, and thus I don't see any reason to assume that he will vote against us in any way that isn't symbolic.

But I'd rather have Joe Manchin than a Republican.

Better the guy who votes with us 20% of the time than one who votes with us 0% of the time.

Quite, though I will point out that he votes with us 40% of the time.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#258450: Oct 23rd 2018 at 10:03:58 AM

Manchin throws off the Senate math because even if we were to somehow win enough seats to claim a 51-49 margin, he can vote with the Republicans and throw it to Mike Pence as the tiebreaker. It's extremely frustrating.

While true, having that 51-49 majority still has its perks. It means we get to set the rules rather than the uber-threat, Mitch McConnell.

Even if he's a Democrat in name only, having his ass in a seat can still make the difference between whether our guy is the Minority or Majority Leader.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 23rd 2018 at 11:04:48 AM

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