2018 U.S election
- Thread starter Zkribbler
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Lexicus
Deity
Which should again make it clear that the problem here is the people who vote for Republicans. It's not Trump. It's not even the Republican Party intelligentsia.
Looks like Walker is ahead by about 2,000 votes in Wisconsin.
Timsup2nothin
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But he was at least in the US. People defending the Alamo weren't.
Timsup2nothin
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I expect a special election to replace him when he resigns.
Timsup2nothin
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My district is currently Democrat challenger up by 56 votes.
Lexicus
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tfw the Alamo is purely a symbol of white supremacy in general and the Slave Power in particular
Timsup2nothin
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Ummmmm...what? Not the appropriate thread, but somewhere you're gonna have to explain that one to me.
Zkribbler
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I expect a Trump pardon.
Timsup2nothin
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Nahhhh. One lame congressman in the GOP minority more or less makes no difference to D'ump.
Martin Alvito
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Having been down the county-by-county rabbit hole and returned:
This is a weird election. The general theme I'm coming away with is that educated voters are repudiating Trump in droves. (The Democrats won Staten Island?!?) At the same time, he's turning out rural, uneducated voters. Just locally, consider:
- Hawley underperformed a generic Republican (average state legislator) by nearly fifteen points in the richest county in the state and still DESTROYED McCaskill on the back of elevated rural turnout that broke heavily for Trump.
- Ann Wagner was running against a poor candidate that barely ran a campaign and is up all of four points, despite performing right at a generic Republican candidate level in said affluent, educated county. Wagner won the last two elections by 23 and 20 points. This seat should never be in play. But unless things change dramatically, the Democrats will find a quality candidate in the next cycle, money will flow into this district and Wagner will lose the seat on activated anti-Trump Democratic turnout in the county next door plus messaging flipping natural Republican votes in this county.
Another big takeaway is the influence of money and where it matters. Wagner and Hawley are functionally indistinguishable, yet Wagner performed at an average R level in this county and Hawley did not. Republican voters got messaging regarding Hawley and responded to it here but not elsewhere, which is probably best explained by education level. They got no such messaging regarding Wagner (I saw her ads, but never the opponent's) and responded accordingly by voting natural party preference in this county.
Trump, then, is probably best explained as activating both sides and contributing towards polarization. He wins states and districts where his message resonates and loses hard where his message turns voters off and activates the opposition. He can be beaten in places where there are enough educated voters to hear and comprehend policy messaging, but is untouchable in places where the demographics are in his favor.
As for what this means for 2020, my gut tells me that the above means that the upper Midwest is off the table for Trump. Add the felons to Florida and I think the map is fundamentally unwinnable for him under present political conditions. (There's plenty of time for that to change, though.)
I don't see 50 seats for the Democrats in the Senate, though. Incumbency advantage can't hold Jones's seat; he beat a historically awful candidate. They're currently -4 with Arizona, Nevada and Montana still out (and MS functionally decided as an R seat). So, best-case scenario, they need four pickups in 2020 if they sweep what's left this cycle and drop the Jones seat. Iowa and North Carolina are gettable on education-level. Add Gardner and Collins and that's the necessary +3 after the virtually certain Jones loss (assuming everything else goes right, which it never does).
The odds of everything breaking that way are long. Maybe not Powerball-long, but definitely struck-by-lightning long. I'm not seeing it.
This is a weird election. The general theme I'm coming away with is that educated voters are repudiating Trump in droves. (The Democrats won Staten Island?!?) At the same time, he's turning out rural, uneducated voters. Just locally, consider:
- Hawley underperformed a generic Republican (average state legislator) by nearly fifteen points in the richest county in the state and still DESTROYED McCaskill on the back of elevated rural turnout that broke heavily for Trump.
- Ann Wagner was running against a poor candidate that barely ran a campaign and is up all of four points, despite performing right at a generic Republican candidate level in said affluent, educated county. Wagner won the last two elections by 23 and 20 points. This seat should never be in play. But unless things change dramatically, the Democrats will find a quality candidate in the next cycle, money will flow into this district and Wagner will lose the seat on activated anti-Trump Democratic turnout in the county next door plus messaging flipping natural Republican votes in this county.
Another big takeaway is the influence of money and where it matters. Wagner and Hawley are functionally indistinguishable, yet Wagner performed at an average R level in this county and Hawley did not. Republican voters got messaging regarding Hawley and responded to it here but not elsewhere, which is probably best explained by education level. They got no such messaging regarding Wagner (I saw her ads, but never the opponent's) and responded accordingly by voting natural party preference in this county.
Trump, then, is probably best explained as activating both sides and contributing towards polarization. He wins states and districts where his message resonates and loses hard where his message turns voters off and activates the opposition. He can be beaten in places where there are enough educated voters to hear and comprehend policy messaging, but is untouchable in places where the demographics are in his favor.
As for what this means for 2020, my gut tells me that the above means that the upper Midwest is off the table for Trump. Add the felons to Florida and I think the map is fundamentally unwinnable for him under present political conditions. (There's plenty of time for that to change, though.)
I don't see 50 seats for the Democrats in the Senate, though. Incumbency advantage can't hold Jones's seat; he beat a historically awful candidate. They're currently -4 with Arizona, Nevada and Montana still out (and MS functionally decided as an R seat). So, best-case scenario, they need four pickups in 2020 if they sweep what's left this cycle and drop the Jones seat. Iowa and North Carolina are gettable on education-level. Add Gardner and Collins and that's the necessary +3 after the virtually certain Jones loss (assuming everything else goes right, which it never does).
The odds of everything breaking that way are long. Maybe not Powerball-long, but definitely struck-by-lightning long. I'm not seeing it.
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Lexicus
Deity
Simple, the Mexicans were the good guys in that battle and the defenders of the Alamo were fighting to turn Texas into a slave colony.
Berzerker
Deity
2 thieves fighting over stolen land
mexicans so bad, only 160 (ish?) good ol' white boys held off an ENTIRE ARMY
and they were there, in texas, because they wanted to stay in texas (Mexico had ordered them cleared out because Mexico was abolitionist) against the sovereign wishes of the government they were subject to by living there.
In 1836 The Spanish had been in Texas for almost 300 years.
Zkribbler
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![[offtopic]](/images/smilies/offtopic.gif "Offtopic [offtopic]")
Jeez, focus guys, focus.
Lexicus
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a CFC:OT thread going off on a tangent?
Timsup2nothin
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Perdue in Georgia will be vulnerable. Looks like Montana just re-elected their Democrat Senator and is electing a Democrat to their statewide single seat in the house, so Daines is probably vulnerable. And the question for others will be "does the primary oust an electable Republican incumbent and replace them with a Roy Moore?"
I'm off to bed guys. Happier Days ahead.
And from the state with the public bank, no less! The one that arose as a brainchild of the original populists. She deserved to lose even if it cost the Dems the Senate, provided that there were some way to tie her comment to her loss. Eff her.
Me too. I mean, the thing is that I have two nieces. Very young, just 3 and 1 right now. But my sister and her husband are both very goody-two-shoes. He's a rural Iowan pastor's son, and she's a wallflower, and I'm just not sure. I'm hoping that both of them manage to repudiate their parents' status, but, it's just...
The thing is, I can't shake the belief that I'm going to have an uncool niece. Maybe two of them. It will probably fall to me to keep them safe from the suede-denim secret police. Many of my best friends are hipsters, so I could spot suede-denim types at a distance of half a mile.
But will I even want to save them? I don't like the way my sister turned out. With my chemistry background, formal and informal, I'd be in perfect position to save my nieces from organic poison gas. But, like, do I want to?
Nope (Lex)/Yep (inno), the Senate side is a GOP win. A neutral outcome would have looked like 50/50 (really 51/50, -1) to 52/48 (+1) for the GOP. The Republicans overthrew not just Heitkamp (as expected) but also Donnelly, McCaskill, and probably Nelson. It's possible they will hold onto either or both of Nevada and Arizona, as well, in addition to Texas and Tennessee as expected. It's looking fairly likely that Tester will lose now as well. This is a worse night than was expected on the Senate side for the Dems. Not worse than was believed to be possible, but worse than their average expected outcome.
From what we saw in polls (candidate support numbers and engagement) by Republicans in the aftermath of Kavanaugh's confirmation vs. before, I'm fairly confident that there was a net-negative effect to the Democrats from the #MeToo attempt against Kavanaugh. As you (inno) said, this does now appear to have been a serious mistake.
I'm a strong opponent of American-style identity politics and also a strong opponent of the Republican Party. I'm more the latter than the former, so I'd be all in favor of Democratic identity brinkmanship if it were reliably effective. But it's not, so...
Martin Alvito
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I tend to think that Tester is an unusually good Democratic candidate for Montana. Daines starts from a baseline that's better than Cornyn's. That's a really tough ask.
There is definitely a risk of further Roy Moores (sup, Todd Akin). Perdue is probably an easier ask than Kyl (utterly brilliant tactical appointment, but illness/death are things), but I've yet to see evidence that statewide office in GA is gettable for the Democrats.
