It's not like there are any important undecided races- just 3 house seats, a senate seat, and racist Joe who's already declared victory.
So I guess Arizona is objectively more terrible than Florida.
Except that it really is a dry heat.
In other ridiculous ballot-related news, the tax resistance movement has ensured legal cannabis in Colorado will be tax-free until another election comes along. (Except sales tax, I suppose.)
Oh wait. What tax other than sales tax would there be, like a sin tax? I thought somehow you meant it was going to be exempt from everything.
Yes, the extra sin tax has apparently been nullified. I imagine if it's legal, there's no reason sales tax wouldn't apply.
I haven't been paying attention to this. Does this mean there is an actual chance Carmona could still win? This was the most important election for my family since my niece has been working on the Carmona campaign, and presumably would have a job if he's elected.
Babies of a certain age have tiny little hands that grab things. I imagine a nipple ring would be ideally placed to grab on to and pull.
5 -- I know. How could any place be objectively worse than Florida?
If it was legal. Which it isn't. Sales tax probably applies in any event, though.
I'm having trouble parsing 13.1. In that it's still illegal federally?
But yes, I remember income from illegal activity is still subject to income tax, so perhaps the same theoretical rule applies to sales tax.
I don't actually think that the late counting is so terrible in and of itself. California also apparently has a large number of ballots to count. The problem is the acting like the election is already over part. For the Presidential counts, this spreadsheet managed by a Cook Political Report dude is the most up-to-date on counts that I have seen.
Is there any reason in particular to not simultaneously be counting early ballots with election day ballots? Or to have started counting early ballots....early? It's frustrating that they're stalling on ballots which lean Democratic.
Well, if the early ballots are mail-in, you need to process them differently. Not that that means much - it could be concurrent.
Those wouldn't be absentee ballots, distinct?
Bora Zivkovic has some interesting thoughts. Expects the Republicans to turn into 90s Yugoslavia - all out civil war and disintegration - and the Democrats to clot into a dull centrist hegemony. Opportunity emerges for an insurgency to their left.
Speaking of Florida, someone please reassure me that Allen "The Prince of Pandemonium" West was not cheated out of his election, because I'm seeing a lot of numbers like "134% of the vote in St. Lucie County".
Some early voting is at polling places, some is by mail; in the latter case the process is like with absentee voting but it's properly called early voting. (No idea how it works in Arizona.)
19: But I like dull centrist hegemony.
Expects ... the Democrats to clot into a dull centrist hegemony.
His powers of predicting the present are astounding.
19: You sweet-talker. I find it much more likely that we'll see low-consequence internal chaos followed by a new consensus and reemergence. The US party system has a lot propping it up - more, I venture, than in the UK.
20: I'm not seeing those numbers from anyone but insane people.
Yes, Supremacy Clause and all that. Our experiment with "legal" weed ended badly for nearly everyone involved: apparently the IRS says you can't deduct the expenses incurred in your marijuana business, and so anyone thinking they are making a profit in the marijuana business is (a) mistaken and (b) engaging in federal tax fraud. Also the CSA is pretty clear about all the stuff you can't do, and anyone involved in the MJ business is doing exactly that stuff.
Two things that everyone is saying that I don't quite get:
-Why do the Republicans have to rethink anything? They had a genuinely repugnant candidate poll within a few percentage points of an incumbent president. If the economy is down in the next cycle, they can have a genuinely repugnant candidate win. And the economy will eventually be down during a national election cycle. If they stay where they are, the country will come to them. And in the meantime, they've got a lot of opportunities to create a more favorable electoral climate just by fucking up the economy.
-I don't get all the mockery of Republicans for thinking they were going to win. Doublethink has flaws as a governing strategy, but there's nothing wrong with it as an electoral strategy. The Republicans' conviction that they were cheated out of it is going to be useful to advancing right-wing political goals, and I'd argue it had zero negative effect on campaign strategy.
I keep waiting for the grownups to take back control of the Republican Party, but the process that Reagan began is complete: The grownups have either converted, or they are no longer in the party.
"134% of the vote in St. Lucie County"
Sigh. It's 141%, and while the number is legit, the people citing it are morons. The St. Lucie numbers are for cards cast, not ballots cast. Because the Florida ballot was so long, it took two cards per voter. So turnout was somewhere in the 70% range. After this was pointed out to the conspiracists, they then started screeching that THE NUMBER OF BALLOTS ISN'T 2X THE NUMBER OF VOTERS. To which, the St. Lucie Supervisor of Elections explained: not all voters filled in the second card that was all just amendments to the constitution.
20: From what I can find for St. Lucie County 118K votes for congressional race, 123K presidential votes, 175K registered voters.
27: The economy is down right now.
28: Maybe they can have another Brook Brothers riot. An actual bit of election violence dismissed as a joke by our betters in the national political media.
It is amazing each time what a screwed up jerry rigged crap system the actual elections process turns out to be. One lesson, that every office -- especially state and local -- is too important to let Republicans occupy it, ever, regardless of whatever failings (and there are many) Democatic candidates/machines/braintrusts might have. One person thinks their vote for county clerk and recorder doesn't matter, and stays home on off year election day, and nothing happens. 40% of the population makes the same decision, and you end up with the wrong person making critical decisions about access and important procedural questions. Ditto legislative seats for people making decisions on redistricting.
The superficial numeric oddity was explained plainly in all caps on the front page of the Supervisor of Elections website, but that hasn't stopped the conspiracy theorists from screaming into their dunce caps.
It is amazing each time what a screwed up jerry rigged crap system the actual elections process turns out to be.
I assume this is the case because jerry rigging is useful to someone. Never ascribe to incompetence that which is adequately explained by malice, say I.
The votes in St. Lucie county for the Dem House candidate track almost exactly with Obama, while West fell off 4K* (~7%) from Romney/Ryan because I guess 1/14 Republicans aren't comfortable with the totally demented.
*More than his margin of defeat.
I don't have a dunce cap, so I comment here.
Lots of dubious stuff in the link in 19. Zivkovic is trying to define the Republican Party out of existence:
GOP is not even a political party any more. A political party is something that has to have policy proposals addressing real-world problems. They don't. They have fear and hatred and jingoism.
So you can't run a party on fear and hatred and jingoism? News to me.
But, of course, Republicans do too have policies for real-world problems, most obviously their plan to transfer money to the deserving wealthy, but also their willingness to bring war to places that are currently war-free.
Not that I'm against wishful thinking, which can go a long way, but this is an unnecessarily complex fantasy.
27: The economy is down right now.
Compared to what?
GOP is not even a political party any more. A political party is something that has to have policy proposals addressing real-world problems. They don't. They have fear and hatred and jingoism
Bad news for Hitler!
and I'd argue it had zero negative effect on campaign strategy.
I don't know, the late Republican push for Pennsylvania was pretty ill-advised, and seems to have been a result of over-confidence in the other states.
27 -- I read somewhere that Rove's mission for the midterms will be to try to kill tea party candidates in otherwise winnable races. Senate Dem chances in places like NC, Arkansas, Louisiana depend pretty substantially on whether the loons can find another loon of the Akin/Mourdock stripe, or maybe a witch again.
I don't think Republicans have to change much, in the short run; dropping the rape guys and giving Limbaugh a good talking to about the Fluke thing might well be enough to win '16.
39: The unemployment rate is near 8%. It is down off a peak, but other than that peak it has not been so high since the early 80s.
Apo, what do you think of Sen Hagan's chances generally?
Democrats got mostly destroyed here this cycle. I think her chances are pretty poor on their own in a midterm electorate, but we'll have to see who ends up running against her. By and large, she hasn't made much of an impression one way or the other.
I don't know, the late Republican push for Pennsylvania was pretty ill-advised, and seems to have been a result of over-confidence in the other states.
HE-WHO-SHALL-NOT-BE-QUESTIONED argued that Pennsylvania was a legit play for Romney under the circumstances.
26: Legally you're quite right, but I think a non-enforcement-based accommodation is quite possible politically. A viable industry doesn't have to have big visible money-makers, either.
Apparently Pennsylvania now stands as an odd outlier as the one swing state without early voting. KEEP THROWING THOSE ADS AT US, CANDIDATES. YOU'LL NEVER OUTSPEND OUR OBLIGATORY SELF-FUNDING REPUBLICAN SENATE NO-HOPER.
That said, she ran some *brutally* effective ads against Elizabeth Dole last time, so she's capable of throwing punches.
44: The folks tracking the effect of the economy on national elections - including (I think) HE-WHO-SHALL-NOT-BE-QUESTIONED - said that the economy should work a bit in Obama's favor. The argument is that the trajectory of the economy is what matters.
It is down off a peak, but other than that peak it has not been so high since the early 80s.
Unemployment as of 11/1/1984: 7.2% - also not good, but down off its peak - and enough for a landslide victory.
Sort of off topic, but is there an emerging consensus about what exactly happened in early October? I was looking at one of those Nate Silver charts yesterday and the massive freefall that Obama went into after the first debate still puzzles me.
I know he did badly, but do that many people pay attention to the debates?
Against Mondale, who is only attractive to Minnesota natives.
53: Beats me. You got a theory, Academic?
I suppose Obama's really worried about it now so that issue is likely to get a lot of attention in the next few months.
54: And me! He also kicked ass in the first debate.
Such was the hunger for beef in those days.
I think it wasn't just the debate in itself, but also that the performances of both candidates really put the brakes on Romney's terrible trajectory of coming across so thoroughly as the weak, cringing, reactive, out-of-touch guy after the 47% video. There was a lot of momentum in that Romney free fall (this moving-objects metaphor is getting excessive, sorry) that made it look like it might just keep going and going, and the debate changed that.
53: The first debate, plus the discussion about it over the following days. I didn't see the debate but I felt like I had an opinion about it.
Mitt had a shitty convention and thus never got a convention bounce, so all the positives that would have gone into that were instead delayed until October.
In human terms, perhaps it's that a lot of
"independents" feel the need to say they've switched at some point, for self-image reasons, before going back to how they always vote, and the debate was the first real trigger for that.
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Didn't someone say in the debt-purchase thread that this kind of thing was somehow illegal?
As Siegel tells it, he owes the bank $18.5 million, and he can't pay. But the bank won't write down the loan. So Siegel tapped a third-party to approach the bank about buying the loan, which they were able to do, for a mere $3.5 million. And then Siegel bought his $18.5 million loan back from the third-party at barely more than a sixth of its original value.
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If Siegal had created a sham corporation to buy his own debt, I think he might have run into trouble. What he did is what a lot of companies do who get along just fine.
I was always so embarrassed when, as a child, I yelled "gotcha!" out of ignorance.
I shouldn't have been so self-conscious, as it's pretty clear that nobody else was.
Also, that law only applies to debts owed by people in the 99%.
61: Yes, this. And there was already some movement back towards Mitt before the debate. I think you had a chunk of "really, really want to vote Republican/against Obama" (and remember chunk=just a few percent) folks for whom the debate provided cover for going where they always wanted to go. I think the debate also temporarily dampened Dem enthusiasm which showed up in polls with aggressive likely voter screens. All of that on the margin, however.
This post should definitely be titled "By the time I get to Arizona."
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"Eric Hartsburg caught some attention in the weeks leading up to the election for having the Romney campaign's logo tattooed on his face. Suffice to say, he's not happy with Tuesday's results."
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JP in 69 gets it right, so much so that I just want to reiterate this:
I think the debate also temporarily dampened Dem enthusiasm which showed up in polls with aggressive likely voter screens.
So many people were freaking out so vocally that it really took the wind out of Dems' sails, at least until the following, very successful debates. And since likely voter screens are more about stated enthusiasm than anything else, they'll pick up ultimately insignificant shifts like that.
If Obama had actually acted like that in the other 2 debates, he really might have lost, because some significant number of voters would have been discouraged, but it was always likely that they'd come back. On the flipside, Mitt would have had to blow all 3 debates in order not to get a bump up to where he ended up (although I do wonder, given the number of "campaign in disarray" stories running by late Sept., whether a 180° flip of the first debate would have been nigh-fatal, with visible partisans fleeing an apparently sinking ship).
Since this is the political thread of the moment, surely we should be discussing this doc, which appears to confirm, on WH stationery, that Obama's final offer to Boehner in 2011 was, in fact, the giant sellout that has been previously reported.
Also the media was super excited to have an angle to get the horse-race going, as well, which fed the narrative.
73 and 75: Can we just let the tax cuts expire and then pass laws funding shit?
We need to slow the growth of Medicare (as we all know SS is fine) but by reforming how we deliver healthcare. I love Elizabeth Warren, but she talks about needing to control the deficit.
What can I do to fight?
What can I do to fight?
I'm not sure, but maybe someone who lives in the DC area could punch these guys in the cock.
Also, the "free fall" is kind of only because the pollster graphs are zoomed in on a portion of the y-axis from 45% to 55%, and because things had been unusually stable before and after the Great Free Fall of Fall 2012.
Just to make the obvious comment.
Expects ... the Democrats to clot into a dull centrist hegemony.
His powers of predicting the present are astounding.
I wouldn't call narrow control of 1.5 of the 3 branches of government a hegemony.
77: The first (and so far only) comment on that link seems to be written by a profoundly weird person. Is this what white residents of DC are like?
79: They certainly represent the mainstream opinion on each of the issues.
79: They certainly represent the mainstream opinion on each of the issues.
They may be dull and centrist (and clearly are to a first approximation); I was quibbling with "hegemony."
Anyone who comments first on a news story with more than one sentence worth of thought is a profoundly weird person. So is anyone who tries to start the discussion with a comment containing 12 instances of the word "I", to an audience that almost entirely has no idea who he/she is.