https://t.co/ipQ7Y0JCnG
1/Politics thread time.
To me, the most important aspect of the 2018 midterms wasn't even about partisan control, but about democracy and voting rights. That's the real battle.
https://t.co/ipQ7Y0JCnG
That suggests there is still SOME grassroots support for democracy that transcends partisanship.
https://t.co/jHHieSkzTg
https://t.co/ffEwTP2SPq
We seem to have accepted electoral dysfunction in Florida as a permanent thing. The 2000 election has never really ended.
https://t.co/auFaCR7WvH
Bad ballot design led to a lot of undervotes for Bill Nelson in Broward Co., possibly even enough to cost him his Senate seat. They do appear to be real undervotes, though, instead of tabulation errors. He doesn't really seem to have a path to victory. https://t.co/utUhY2KTaR
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 16, 2018
The big worry is that it functioned as a trial balloon.
https://t.co/qcPP0wGGDR
The GOP abandoned hope of winning over nonwhite voters, and went with the "Sailer Strategy": https://t.co/jBH0K4JUv4 …
Which is why voting rights have become such a central issue.
It's about breaking the Sailer Strategy, and putting to bed the idea that electioneering can make nonwhite voters disappear.
https://t.co/p3vGgC3A1D
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN pic.twitter.com/hdZzNEvsjG
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) November 15, 2018
More from Noah Smith
If you're on Twitter all the time - as every political commentator now is - it's easy to think that whiny, big-talking Twitter slacktivists are "the Dems".
But what's happening out there on the ground?
— VeryHiddenGeniusHat (@Popehat) October 18, 2018
This is another reason I think Twitter is so bad for society.
It convinces intellectuals and commentators that practically everyone who's on their side is an extremist.
Which makes them tolerate extremism out of a (false) feeling of necessity.
If you stay on Twitter too much (which we all do now), you start to think that the typical left-of-center person is some British wanker who quote-tweets "Imagine thinking this" to anyone who doesn't like the idea of "ending capitalism".
But he is not typical.
A majority of Americans are not on Twitter.
But *every* journalist, commentator, and intellectual *has* to be on Twitter.
So every journalist, commentator, and intellectual comes face to face with big-talking slacktivist faux-extremists day in and day out.
It's a problem!!
Online bubbles full of shouty faux-extremists are, in general, fine.
The difference is that every journalist, commentator, and intellectual is essentially forced to exist in THIS bubble, because their jobs require it.
Twitter is a dystopian technology.
(end)
This explains why immigration is now at the center of partisan conflict.
Why did California turn Blue?
— Sen. Eric Brakey (@SenatorBrakey) October 28, 2018
Why is Texas turning Blue?
The left has failed at selling socialism to the American people for decades. We have rejected it.
Their new strategy is mass importation of new voters to transform our political culture.
Of course, the belief in ethnic bloc voting becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When a slight Dem tilt among Hispanics and Asians caused the GOP to turn against them, Hispanics and Asians shifted more toward the Dems. Etc. etc. A self-reinforcing cycle.
Bush's 2006 amnesty attempt, and the 2013 intra-GOP fight over immigration reform, were two moments when the GOP could have turned back to the approach of Reagan, and courted Hispanics and Asians.
But they decided against this, and...here we are.
What will disrupt this bad equilibrium, and save American politics from being an eternal race war?
Either:
A) More white voters will grow disgusted with the GOP approach and defect, or
B) The GOP will find some non-immigration-related issues to attract more Hispanics and Asians.
As long as both parties see elections in terms of racial bloc voting - where the only way to win is to increase turnout among your own racial blocs or suppress turnout by the other party's racial blocs - American politics will not improve, and the country will decline.
(end)
More from Politics
1/
So I went to her campaign website and took that web address and looked through the internet archive. When I went back to 2017, it was not her website, it belonged to the group "Brand New Congress."
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Here's what the web address https://t.co/Uhz2q4Dpll looks like now:
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Here's what the same web address looked like in late 2017:
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What's “Brand New Congress?” BNC is a group of Bernie Sanders staffers who got together, decided to make the 2018 midterms all about Bernie policies by taking his ideas & finding 400 Bernie carbon copies to dump into Congressional & other races, creating a 400 headed Bernie.
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Michael van der Veen begins Trump's defense: "The article of impeachment now before the Senate is an unjust and blatantly unconstitutional act of political vengeance" pic.twitter.com/xRaZHEPIaC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 12, 2021
Es wird argumentiert, dass Trump nur habe sicherstellen wollen, dass die Wahl fair abgelaufen sei. Die Verteidigung zeigt Clips einzelner Demokraten, die der Zertifizierung von Trumps Stimmen 2016 widersprechen. (Dass es 2016 keinen von Obama gesandten Mob aufs Kapitol gab?Egal!)
Die intellektuelle Unehrlichkeit ist so unfassbar, ich weiß kaum, wo ich hier überhaupt anfangen soll; so viele fucking Strohmänner auf einmal.
Die Verteidigung spielt random Clips, in denen Demokraten “fight” sagen, fast zehn Minuten lang. Weil Trump 20mal am 6. Januar “fight” gesagt hat. Dies ist kein Witz. Komisch, dass sonst die Folge nie war, dass ein Mob das Kapitol gestürmt hat und Pence hängen wollte
WATCH: Trump's defense plays nearly 10 minutes of clips showing Democrats using the word "fight," to defend Trump using the word "fight" about 20 times in his speech to supporters before the Capitol riot began https://t.co/YUg7sgxuDX pic.twitter.com/3eMNp7E2S2
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 12, 2021
“Dieser Fall geht um politischen Hass” Ich mein, ja. “Die House Managers hassen Donald Trump.”
So close.