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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Well, since Elle was talking about Senate races, I might as well bring up my own.
Here in Ohio, we've got incumbent Rob Portman (R) going up against Ted Strickland (D). Now, I know really only two things about Portman - he's in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood, but he's also a confirmed supporter of same-sex marriage since 2013, and the first incumbent Republican on this level to do so in years.
Meanwhile, Strickland...well, he wasn't a very popular governor, to say the least; he lost to John Kasich back in 2010, and he's still not very well-liked. I'm not even sure what we agree on - when it comes to social issues (my primary focus, I think), I've found precious little (then again, my research has been rather slim).
Anyone who's more familiar with these guys maybe want to chip in?
edited 12th Oct '16 7:24:19 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!On a brief skim of articles, Portman seems to be trying to appeal to Clinton voters and has a mix of progressive and conservative positions on his record (anti-abortion being probably the most negative). He initially endorsed (apparently only out of party loyalty) and recently un-endorsed Trump. He seems to actually give a damn about poverty and community service and is big with the unions in the state.
A quick glance at Politi Fact has Portman way ahead on Strickland for their ratings, though the sample size for both is smallish.
edited 12th Oct '16 7:51:52 PM by Elle
Cracked has a great article
on why rural people are so desperate that they're voting for Trump, and honestly, it's a really good read. It tells things from the perspective of someone who used to live in the rural areas himself.
See, rural jobs used to be based around one big local business — a factory, a coal mine, etc. When it dies, the town dies. Where I grew up, it was an oil refinery closing that did us in. I was raised in the hollowed-out shell of what the town had once been. The roof of our high school leaked when it rained. Cities can make up for the loss of manufacturing jobs with service jobs — small towns cannot. That model doesn't work below a certain population density.
If you don't live in one of these small towns, you can't understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involve moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called "Cost of Living." Let's say you're a smart kid making $8 an hour at Walgreen's and aspire to greater things. Fine, get ready to move yourself and your new baby into a 700-square-foot apartment for $1,200 a month, and to then pay double what you're paying now for utilities, groceries, and babysitters. Unless, of course, you're planning to move to one of "those" neighborhoods (hope you like being set on fire!).
It's an eye-opening read. I really want to see a politician say to the rural voters, "I get your problems. I see what's happening," and propose a solution that isn't about shitting on whatever minorities a bunch of rural people dislike.
I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive.
And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets.
I wish they'd look at their actual real problems and not stupidly go after evolution and gays and whatever as a cheap scapegoat. Sadly, it's very hard to get people to wake out of their simplistic human need to want to lash out at something "other". But we do need some politicians or other high-profile people who tell rural people that while racism and other bigotries aren't cool, their genuine need to have opportunity and education and the ability to move up is very real, and someone needs to do something about it.
Instead, Trump comes along and appeals to both their needs, and their bigotries, at the same time. He's a hero to some for voicing their needs, but he's a hero to others for voicing their bigotries. And that doesn't help rural people at all.
Trump is trying to outdo Cosby isn't he?
New Survey coming this weekend!
x4 In addition to that, he does seem to legimately care about stopping human trafficking.
The problem is his opposition to abortion and Planned Parenthood, which annoys me considerably - I might actually consider voting for him if that wasn't the case.
Now Ted Strickland is pro-choice and is also in favor of fighting climate change, which is good. The trouble is that the general consensus seems to be that he did not do a good job as Ohio's governor, particularly as it relates to the economy, but I don't really have all the details there.
I suppose it's possible that he might do better in the legislative branch than the executive branch - he was a six-term Congressman, five of which were consecutive. Hell, in 2004, he ran unopposed.
In any case, if 538's anything to go by, Portman's a shoe-in, so this is likely purely academic. Still, it's something that's been bothering me. Anyone have any thoughts?
Where did you get this? Could we have a link?
edited 12th Oct '16 8:04:31 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!Thanks!
Forgive me for asking this, but do you think that maybe you could provide more links in the future, when you first post quotes? It's not like I doubt your information or anything, I just think that it helps to have sources for this sort of thing.
Oh God! Natural light!I mean, the thing about Trump's appeal to rural voters is that he won't actually help rural voters. Which sounds damning, but honestly, I can't confidently claim Hillary will either. Which in turn reminds me of a quote that I'm about totally butcher because I want express the general sentiment:
"Any claim that American doesn't have a class system should be met with through scrutiny. For you see, there is currently a black president. We are now able to vote for a female president. I can imagine that some day, we may be able to vote for an openly gay president. But it's hard to think we could ever be able to elect a poor president."
So Trump doesn't represent them, but he's the closest they can hope to get.
Republicans have spent their political capital on creating the Big Lie that their economic policies would do anything to help rural Americans. Even (or perhaps especially) where Republicans dominate politics, the prospects of that part of America don't improve. So they are mad, and looking for an alternative. Of course, it's a guy who'll screw them even more royally, but they seem to have long since lost any powers of political discernment. They reject liberal solutions out of hand, wallowing as they do in fundamentalist religious beliefs and racist social values, so as far as I can see their cause is completely hopeless.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:34:57 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"basically if you want the government to function next year, vote Democrat for Senate, no matter what's wrong with the Democrat. Otherwise the constitutional crisis with the Supreme Court will continue (i can hear Grassley now: "we can't hold hearings on a nominee proposed by someone so criminally irresponsible.")
I guess it goes to show how desperate they are for something to believe in, because if you sit down and think about it, you can figure out he wouldn't do anything even with only a surface understanding of politics and socialization.
The guy doesn't know anything about their way of life or what they go through, he was born into money and has continued to revel in it. He's completely self-absorbed and only ever gives lip service to caring about or respecting anything or anyone besides himself.
But I also recognize that it's pretty easy for me to say that given that I've never been in that situation.
They're still wrong, but I have no doubt that they really are suffering.
Yeah, this upsets me too. I desperately want to find a way to reach out to rural voters, but I think the Republicans are too deeply entrenched now - both sides are too hostile to each other.
Anyway, as for Ohio's Senate election, unless something happens to make me change my mind in the next month or so, I think I've made up my mind - I'm going to vote for the Green Party candidate.
Now, you might be thinking "But Karkat, do you even like the Green Party?" Well, no - I've already made it clear that I dislike Jill Stein, and I think the Greens either vastly overestimate their chances, or vastly underestimate the damage they could do if they divert votes from Hillary; quite possibly both, really.
But this isn't the Presidency, this is one of Ohio's Senate seats. And Ted Strickland, unless something huge happens in the next couple of weeks, is not going to win this election. And Rob Portman is hardly the worst Republican in the world - he seems to alright on the issues, it's just the Planned Parenthood stuff that makes me unable to vote for him. Ergo, I think there's zero risk going with the Green Party candidate here.
Ted Strickland isn't a good candidate for the Senate, if only because his unpopularity means that few will be voting for him, and the Democrats know this - much like the Republicans with Trump, they have decided to focus their efforts elsewhere. So this time (and I don't plan on making a habit of this), I plan on lodging a protest vote for Ohio's Senate seat, in hope's that somehow, a message is sent that next time, the Democrats are going to need a better candidate.
Not sure I'd bet the message gets received, though.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:46:53 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!It's Slate and I'm not a fan of Slate but the article is useful: An updated list of all the sexual assault allegations made against Trump so far
edited 12th Oct '16 8:52:23 PM by Elle
@Senate stuff: I'd almost be tempted to vote Portman if I were you, Karkat. Because destroying the GOP utterly simply isn't feasible- or, indeed, desirable- so instead, one wants to make sure the ones that aren't crazy get to stick around. And whether or not they've stuck with Trump is as good a barometer as any to distinguish the crazy from the sane.
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Yep, it's going downhill fast.
Back to rural Americans for a sec... even if their wildest dreams came true and they got the government to focus specifically on their economic problems — revitalizing small towns with new industries and whatnot — it still wouldn't fix their loss of socioeconomic and political power. Ye olden days when rural whites were a dominant political force in America are gone and won't ever come back. It's a bit like the coal industry. There will never again be hundreds of thousands of workers employed mining coal. It's just a simple reality.
Lament times past all you want, but your way of life is dead. Time to find a new one.
Edited to add: a national minimum basic income would do wonders to help those areas, since it would be larger in real terms thanks to their lower cost of living. Being guaranteed enough to live on no matter what you do would lead to massively increased mobility, so people would feel free to seek out education and employment opportunities all across the nation, and the mixing of communities thanks to increased mobility would help to break up the insularity of small towns.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:00:19 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
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That's fair, actually. I'll definitely consider it. I'll need to keep my eyes on the news, though - if Portman jumps ship again like some of the others have, I'm definitely not voting for him.
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True, but that's easier said than done. How does one revitalize rural America? What new way of life is there for them?
Somewhat
'd.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:02:59 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!You know what I find kinda extra disturbing about the case that Fox linked to?
Why does that disturb me? Because there's a certain implication to the butler bursting in, that being that the butler may have known what was going on and been inturupting in purpose, and for the butler to know such things had to have happened a lot, a fuck of a lot.
I may be reaching, but it just seems so very possible.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:41:14 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
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I don't have an easy answer, or I'd have said it already. I will say that lack of income is the biggest macroeconomic issue facing them, so solving that (with MBI) would have knock-on effects that would significantly improve all the other problems. For example, why start a business in a small rural town if your customers are all too poor to afford what you sell? Well, with MBI, that would no longer be the case. You could then employ people in the town, leading to higher incomes, leading to more businesses being created, with more jobs, and so on — positive synergy rather than negative.
The most fundamental problem facing the consumer economy across the United States as a whole is the lack of enough liquid cash to fully satisfy the desire for a decent standard of living. Simply giving people the cash to make that happen, regardless of employment or other factors, would fix the macroeconomic problem and have massive downstream benefits, such as incentivizing renewed investment into production capacity that would help to utilize all the money floating around in stock markets and whatnot.
Rather than a death spiral or an endless stagnation, a life spiral.
Edited to add: All this would, in turn help fix the political problems facing the country, because people who have enough to eat and comfortable living conditions don't turn to extremist ideologies in the hopes of finding a political identity. Even if they are racist as hell, there's less perception that they are competing in a zero-sum game of economic power.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:13:36 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

His ground game is poor enough that it may not just be his "get out the vote" effort that suffers but also his "get out the voter suppression" that suffers. He still has to get people to polling stations, he still has to tell them where to go vote/suppress voters, he still has to contact people ahead of time, he still has to ensure proper distribution of voter suppressors.
If his ground game is as poor as is being claimed Trump may actually get less votes with groups he's gained points with, simply because they're not properly herded on Election Day.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran