41:Democrats in Deep Trouble ...via djw (who hates me) at LGM
Part of the reason I don't much care about living ten more years is that I can't bear the idea of, after the barbarians gain all branches and go Goth on us, listening to the Dems whine and whimper "Not our fault! Racism! Sexism!"
Don't wanna be here for it.
Yeah, it seems like such an obviously terrible idea. I can't figure out why he's dragging it out.
Is there much of any sign that he's likely to? People keep on talking about it, but I don't think anything I've heard has been related to a statement of intent. I mean, I think he'd probably leap into the fray if Hilary were hit by a meteor, but I can't see why he would otherwise.
Will no one think of Mark Halperin?
"Biden and Ryan share fundamental traits: both are patriotic, neither is pretentious, and neither would seek power for power's sake."
I don't think it's likely, but deep down I hope that Biden knows damn well that he has no intention of running but he's having too much fun taunting the press about it to let them know. Or possibly this is a coordinated way to keep the press from obsessing childishly about fake Clinton scandals for the entire primary season by giving them some other toy to play with, which might not be a bad idea really.
Not pithy enough. I think the slogan should be "JOE-N'T DO IT"
LB, there have been lots of reports lately about him having meetings with donors and reaching out to union representatives. It seems he's considering it pretty seriously.
Cause he knows, somehow, that HRC ain't gonna make it, and throwing his hat in the ring at the last minute just ain't gonna work. You think you're pissed now, imagine August next year.
First woman Pres gonna be Carly, with VP Ben, succeeding her in short order.
See 1), I'm laughing already.
Agreed. If he'd declared before the first debate I might support him, but if he's playing silly buggers for a while before jumping in he needs to stay out or lose if he gets in.
I want to watch the "Stupid Republican" meme try to work on a ticket of the woman CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a black brain surgeon.
They will pull, not all of the demographics, but just enough, especially when the Dems are in a circular firing squad.
I can't figure out why he's dragging it out.
Just Biden his time, I guess.
7: A certain amount of positioning is compatible with "what if she gets hit by a meteor", which is probably higher odds for her than for most candidates -- she's old enough to make sudden health problems not implausible, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy could strike gold, some loon could shoot her. If he's just staying in position so that he can jump in late if something happens to her, I think that'd explain everything.
The democrats won't be so lucky as to have Fiorina as the Repub nominee. When your oppo research is basically printing out old Business Week editorials, you're in a pretty strong position.
If he wants to do 12 right, he should lobby to be her VP.
There's a substantial wing of the Democratic party establishment that for one reason or another either got burned by or hates the Clintons, yet who aren't particularly left on policy and would rather drink benzene than support Bernie, whom they view as a joke. These guys have lots of access to the press and have 100% set their hopes on Biden, and keep feeding stories about him potentially running. Biden himself is probably smart enough not to run but won't categorically rule himself out so as to stay viable in case Hillary stumbles disastrously. But even if he did rule himself out these guys would keep leaking stories/pressuring him to run until the nomination is entirely sewn up.
So, slatepitch time: by nominating Bernie, Democrats can make an inroad into the Republicans' stranglehold on the cranky old guy vote.
Were those guys supporting Obama in 2008? I mean, HRC has been the presumptive nominee since 2006. How have they not gotten used to the idea?
Edwards. Obama won't let me follow him around.
Fiorina is losing a bunch of her post-debate bump. It turns out that even for the Republican primary there's a limit on how much coldblooded lying the MSM will tolerate, and how much you can fail upward.
Fiorina's lies about PP led to the public House Republican spanking by C Richards, gave more ammunition to the crazy caucus to shoot any sane Republicans in the face, and indirectly caused Boehner's downfall with no plausible replacement. To go all "butterfly flapped it's wings," without Kevin McCarthy getting national scrutiny as presumptive speaker of the house, he probably wouldn't have made the Benghazi gaffe or had it become national television, which killed the Republicans' best and shiniest Clinton witch hunt. As a result of Fiorina's "good" debate performance, she's managed to take the sails out of the "PP eats baby hearts and sells their body parts" AND the "BENGHAZI!!1!!1" scandals, turning both into Democratic victories. Fiorina couldn't have done more for Hilary if she were her campaign manager.
*The more I think about this, the more we need to see Fiorina on present stage. With her attacks on the ACA, we might get national healthcare in record time.
Still, there's been a lot of time since Edwards for them to get used to Clinton.
As of September, far more network news TV time had been devoted to Biden's "campaign" than Sanders real one.
15
This pretty much sums up the NYTimes coverage, which has been pushing for months that 1) Hilary sucks and can't win, but 2) she is running unopposed and needs an acceptable white guy to challenge her.*
*Seriously, it's like there's a taboo on mentioning Sanders's name. You basically get articles like, "Hilary not winning in NH because she's a criminal, but we're not sure where the other votes are going. Strange."
The inclusion of Biden in all of the reported polls is one among countless fucked up things about the campaign coverage so far.
The Biden thing could be smart and real. If Sanders wins Iowa and New Hampshire, HR would then trounce Bernie in SC. But maybe, beside the unknown unknowns, maybe she will just not wear well, after 25+ years in our faces, maybe we are getting tired of her. I think that is part of the Bush factor, although Ezra has a great article at Vox about how Trump is just humiliating Jeb.
But the identity factions would just go postal if HRC get beaten in fair contests, or is edged out unfairly. It would not stand.
I really don't think the Repubs will tolerate a Rubio this time, and Trump won't win. Brokered convention? They would love to shove Carly and Ben in Dem's faces
It still could be Jeb, money and organization tends to surprise.
Was painting Joe Biden as the adorable eccentric uncle the brilliant creation of some strategist somewhere?
I don't think Trump is a Democratic mole, but I would buy that he got into the race just to mess with JEB!. Apparently his feud with the Bush family goes back decades.
Ezra has a great article at Vox
Just had to highlight this! Never thought I'd see those words from bob.
I believe it was on this here blog that I read that Jeb had taken Trump's money and then not given him (permission to build) a casino in Florida.
I don't know, I can't imagine Biden beating HRC's demographics. White male cranks like me will go for Bernie (and that isn't certain), women and blacks to HRC in a landslide, who do they think will vote for Biden in the primaries?
But the number crunchers could see her losing the general.
A certain amount of positioning is compatible with "what if she gets hit by a meteor"
DeLong quoted somebody who described this as, "Biden is 'running' as Hilary's VP pro tem through November 2016; if something happened to Hillary or if she had decided that she just couldn't face two years of this, Biden would be there."
41:Democrats in Deep Trouble ...via djw (who hates me) at LGM
I wanted to post that link. I just didn't understand why the tone of the article was so angry -- my understanding is that isn't a new issue and that the Democrats are well aware of it. I'm sure that MY is more plugged in than I am, and perhaps he's right that, even though the Dems are conscious of the issue, they have no plans to address it -- but I'm not sure that I take his word for that.
Is it true that Joe Biden leaked to Maureen Dowd that Beau's dying wish was that Joe would run?
I think the slogan should be "JOE-N'T DO IT"
"Say it ain't so, Joe!"
The prospect of 2020 redistricting at this point is pretty chilling. Another decade of Dem presidents and GOP Congresses?
My rule of thumb is that MY is about as right as Slate. I assume what he's saying is wrong until proven otherwise.
My rule of thumb is that MY is about as right as Slate. I assume what he's saying is wrong until proven otherwise.
32.2/36: well, if they do have any plans or strategies to address this issue, they're sure quiet about them. I don't put any blind trust in MY, but the article rings true to me.
The commenters over at LGM ain't so bad.
As I have said before, I see the problem as geographical, Dems are too concentrated in big cities and nice states, around their own and people like them. The electoral map is just terrifying.
My solution is no saner than any others, y'all come on down to Texas, but Dems can't have real power in a geographically defined political system when they are conceding 90% of the land mass to the opposition. And can't change the rules until gain supermajority first.
They have to move to places they don't like, and that don't like them, and change them.
32: How would one address it? Geography and voting laws within Republican led states are untouchable, so that pretty much leaves improving Democratic vote share (especially in off-year elections), and I'm not sure the Democrats have shown any ability or willingness to do this.
there's a limit on how much coldblooded lying the MSM will tolerate, and how much you can fail upward...when you're a woman.
I mean, let's be honest. There's always the Manly Liar like Romney who does it and it's a social dominance thing. But the press and the Republican party generally aren't really comfortable with women doing that kind of thing - it fits too easily into the misogynist women-haters club views about women in power.
I suspect that the lying is having a smaller effect on Fiorina, though. Despite endless, lavish praise from the media she just doesn't have anything to bring to the primary to make her a candidate. But the press love the idea of having her around, and so every time they have an excuse they aggressively promote her as being amazing/thrilling/incredible/etc., and she gets a moderate bump in the polls that lasts just as long as it takes for the press to get bored of "Fiorina is now a serious candidate!" stories and then she starts to drop back down as people forget her. She could stay up longer if she could find a way to remain an interesting candidate for the press - but when I said she doesn't have anything to bring to the primary I mostly meant that she hasn't managed to find anything that would do that.
I suspect that many Democratic politicians are mostly interested in their own careers and only incidently in progressive governance, so Republican dominance in other districts and states, and their control over federal chokepoints doesn't concern them.
I was going to link that article too. I think it is pretty accurate in how liberals are focused on hrc vs bs (or Biden!) and no one even talks about a 50 state strategy anymore.
Correction: The commenters at LGM in the thread about MY's article, on issues like the 50-state strategy, 2010 midterms, and menus of issues aren't so bad.
Most times the place is madness.
My understanding is that the big problem the Dems have on the local/state level is funding; not being the party of the Very Rich they have a real problem there, and for whatever reason the "get a bazillion middle-class squishes to send 50 bucks each" model, which worked fine for Obama and seems to be working for Sanders, doesn't work on the local level.
I'd vote for Joe. I think he's an electable Not Hillary. While I do prefer Bernie's politics, I have no illusions that they would go over well in the general election.
How would one address it?
Party building at the state level. I honestly have no idea what effort is being put into that, but I don't think it's "none." For example MY mocks Wendy Davis in Texas:
This is why an impassioned defense of the legality of late-term abortions could make Wendy Davis a viral sensation, a national media star, and someone capable of activating the kind of donor and volunteer networks needed to mount a statewide campaign. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, this is precisely the wrong issue profile to try to win statewide elections in conservative states.
But I have the impression (from very far away) that there has been a fair amount of effort put into building the democratic party in Texas, and that the bellweather of success will be mobilizing black and latino voters.
Another great media quote on Biden (from an unnamed source identified as a confidant of Biden's): "He has never really been part of the Democratic establishment and could care less about it."
The national parties have very very little to do with State legislative elections. Maybe slightly more now that the parties are increasingly ideological, but in many places this hurts Republicans. And the electoral cycles are often quite different. I do think there could be a lot more done to bring low-income and especially Latino voters to the polls in state and off-year national elections.
I'd not seen it, but if Joan Walsh has this right, Joe will not be running:
There's one new Biden-watch development that backs me up: The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol says the vice president is definitely running. Wrong-way Bill is so consistently mistaken in his political judgment that his prediction virtually guarantees Biden won't enter the race.
One way I was glad to expand my understanding of districting in the last couple of years was learning how the suburban/urban divide in voter density gives the GOP an advantage even if they weren't gerrymandering (as long as we insist on geographic districts).
(Imagine 20 districts of equal population, 12 districts are 55% GOP, 8 districts are 75% Dem. GOP therefore has 43% of the votes but 60% of the seats.)
Yes, 53 is an important point -- the national Congressional vote is in fact currently about breakeven, but that yields a consistent Democratic minority in the House even without redistricting issues. The key is flipping enough of those 55% GOP districts, and in many places the hope for doing so is Latinos.
53 see 41
54 yes Latinos. But fact is in many cases increasing black poor turnout will only increase your incumbent's margins.
I won't argue against majority-minority districts, so I will ask people to just move. Urban districts don't need you Richard Floridians.
Since reading about this conspiracy theory on Gawker, I have been yearning for a Biden/Kanye ticket.
56: or at any rate some sort of sitcom based on that principle.
I won't vote for Joe, third at best on my list.
Sanders ain't radical enough for me to care, and doesn't look like the type to raise hell. So HRC as of now.
Not that I am enthused for fuck's sake.
The key is flipping enough of those 55% GOP districts, and in many places the hope for doing so is Latinos.
My hope is that when they did the gerrymandering in 2010, they were greedy enough to stretch it down to, say, 52% in some cases, so that by the end of the decade, demographic changes might be able to knock that down to 48%. I'm sure that's not the case everywhere, but it probably is in some districts, and those need to be identified and exploited.
Was painting Joe Biden as the adorable eccentric uncle the brilliant creation of some strategist somewhere?
I've read that Joe himself is mystified by it. He is, after all, a teetotaling Catholic who trained home to see his sons every day. Obviously there's some aspect of his public persona that supports the Onion version of Joe (probably the quote in 50 hints at it), but it's too far off base to make sense as a secret strategy.
By contrast, the HRC meme with the shades and Blackberry, while almost certainly grass roots, meshes almost perfectly with the best* parts of her persona: in charge, doesn't suffer fools, TCOB. If you told me that someone in her circle really had put that out there, it would be only mildly surprising. I'd be stunned of Joe had a mole at the Onion.
*as in, most popular, most appealing to voters (especially her core of feminist[ish] women)
59: This. One election and all the Republicans evaporate.
61: Yeah, but without a decent movement that might be the 2040 election.
Wow, Biden voted against the first Iraq war and for the second...
On the good side, I guess the pattern means he's against having a third one?
Or he's going to vote for it twice.
Probably a reason a lot of Democrats voted for the second war is because of all the shit they took after voting against the first. I remember it was common in the mid-to-late 1990s to point out that liberals were a bunch of ninnies for opposing Gulf War I, because it ended up being so short and easy.
Lying shitstain Jonathan Karl is ON IT!
A person involved in @JoeBiden deliberations tells me he "has not reached an actual decision and therefore there is no announcement coming"
Even as a purely political calculation that was stupid.
Really, I think he's going to run. Sure he doesn't have much of a chance of winning, but if he does win, he gets to make his own pyramid library. Forty years in high public office doesn't even get you an obelisk.
I think that depends on how many lobbyists you're friendly with. Obelisks aren't that expensive, after all.
Nobody on Etsy is offering to make one.
70: I put up a tiny one in my honor in my backyard.
1: I found that Vox article rather odd. He lists marriage equality as one example of an issue where Democrats are marching to the left rather than doing what is necessary to win state elections. That's an issue that has the clear support of a majority of Americans that is increasing every year, which has just won a major national victory that has made it the law nation-wide, and as a result, will probably face even higher support in future years as more people get used to the idea. (It's one thing to oppose it in the unknown abstract; it's harder when it's your co-worker or neighbor handing out the wedding invitations.) Is there some reason he thinks Democrats shouldn't be embracing an issue like that?
Why must everybody laugh at my tiny obelisk?
My theory is that Hillary thinks Joe's going to run, and that's why she came out against the TPP. She know's Joe will have to be for it because it's the administration's baby.
The article in 1 is weird in a way that's typical of MY, and I don't really buy it. He goes on and on about how the Democrats are obsessing over the presidential primary and ignoring state legislative elections without providing any evidence whatsoever that either is true. I think this is because he's just reading the national political news, which is of course dominated by the presidential election, and not actually paying attention to what's happening on the ground in the states.
For a concrete example, Alaska is a very conservative state that has been trending noticeably leftward over the past few elections. The legislature is still Republican-dominated because of the structural factors that led it to get that way, but last year the statewide electorate legalized marijuana and raised the minimum wage while electing an Independent/Democratic joint ticket for governor/lt. governor over an incumbent Republican. Alaska politics is distinctive in ways that make it a very bad proxy for other states, but it is one example of things not really fitting MY's assumptions.
77/78 Yes, our worthless clown-like national media isn't just ignoring state level politics; by saying that nothing is going on, they're undercutting efforts which, ime, are real and substantial. Undercutting because donors and donors flunkies read national media.
We have a governors race that'll be a big damn deal, and we're going to be flooded with right wing out of state money. Our chief justice is also running for re-election, and will also face this flood. Both have done very well in their jobs, and ought to win.
On the other hand, Rep Zinke was just in the news musing about whether he might toss his hat in the ring for Speaker -- a silly thought, but just being talked about (he says he was asked) is an advantage. Who wants to run against him? No one yet, sfaik.
I was a bit disturbed to look at the list of current US congresspeople and see that about 3/4 of the ones over 70 are Democrats. This is simply a byproduct of the new Republican party in which the Koch brothers et al can give unlimited funds to "insurgent" candidates to win primary elections on the basis that the incumbent is insufficiently maniacal because he has compromised more than 0 times in his career. But it's definitely a problem when the media perceives all the exciting vibrant new politicians to be exciting vibrant right-wing fanatics.
You know Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, Jim Clyburn, Ruben Hinojosa, Louise Slaughter, Charlie Rangel, Steny Hoyer, Alcee Hastings? They're all at least 75. There are 18 Democrats and 4 Republicans currently in the House of Representatives who were born in 1940 or earlier.
(Imagine 20 districts of equal population, 12 districts are 55% GOP, 8 districts are 75% Dem. GOP therefore has 43% of the votes but 60% of the seats.)
Or in Pennsylvania, GOP has 45% of the votes (for Tom Smith for Senate in 2012) and 72% of the seats.
On the other hand, Tom Smith is dead.
What, Old Tom Smith dead?! Then I'm King of the Cats!
"How old Tom Smith?"
"Old Tom Smith dead; how you?"
Because Rule 34 is a thing and because we have rules, I'd like to point out that 82 is true and refers to the same guy as in 81.
||
Canada has a new Prime Minister. He's young!
|>
What kind of a place is always run by somebody with the last name of a former head of government?
Hallelujah. Not that Canada affects me at all, but Harper's reign was such a blot on decency.
The world is all connected in ways we can't understand. Canada probably affects us all in small, immeasurable ways, like Unibroue or trying to pump oil through our ancestral (sort of) homeland.
I regret that the NDP got so badly clobbered on the way there. I'm relieved Harper's gone but reform of our electoral system was what I was hoping for, and I don't know if that will happen now. But yes, Harper's gone, that's good.
but Harper's reign was such a blot on decency.
Harper had promised/threatened to set up a "barbaric cultural practices" hotline.
Trudeau, on the other hand, is totally going to legalize weed.
For $1.99/minute, it's probably cheaper than phone sex.
Go Canada! Yay and congratulations!
The NDP vote collapse demonstrates how stupid politics is, and how we deserve to be ruled by the corvids. Wearing a niqab because men must never see your face is stupid. Actually caring enough about whether other people wear niqabs causing you to switch your vote away from the NDP for not caring is stupid. The fact that either a) the Canadian system prevents coalitions or b) Canadian voters are too stupid to understand that they live in a Parliamentary democracy (I'm still not clear which is the case, since I also am stupid) caused everybody to switch to the Liberals is also stupid.
But yay! Fuck you Harper, you low-rent Republican-wannabe. The weirdest -- not the worst, but the weirdest -- Harper policy was the attacks on Statistics Canada. Who's against compiling national statistics? The Republicans have flirted with it, but have never gone as far as Harper.
Who's against compiling national statistics?
People whose policies don't work?
96: and people who think that if you do a census properly it'll disadvantage their political faction. As in, for example, Bosnia, where they haven't done one since 1990 because they all know they'd discover there are barely any Croats left.
A WOMANS PLACE IS BARE HEADED AND IN THE KITCHEN
48: I would vote for Joe in the general election only because the alternatives (a Republican) would be so horrible. But the bankruptcy bill he spearheaded still burns. I would never vote for him in a primary.
So, I'm pretty sure that my mother-in-law and father-in-law are Harper supporters. They live in Ontario but are from Manitoba. My father-in-law's brother is Conservative but fine with the NDP. They run the government competently etc., but they all hate the Liberals.
From more reliable sources (i.e. a retired professor I know in Kingston), I'm told that the Federal Liberals are better than the Provincial ones.
What's going on where the NDP is more acceptable to a certain kind of conservative voter?
"So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."?
Honestly a really humiliatingly huge percentage of the (human, pretty much anywhere) population views politics on anything above a very small scale as just a kind of sport, and the policies involved are secondary and/or just treated the way people sing team songs at sporting events. So they're likely to react more along the lines of "well at least they take things seriously" to people who are directly opposed to them - instead of "they're even worse than the boring people I disagree with half the time".
There's also the bit where a sincere principled opponent seems more admirable than someone who does what you want more often but doesn't have firm convictions - it's the "well at least you know where Bernie Sanders stands!" phenomenon. And that's appealing on an interpersonal level, so there are going to be people who just kind of generally extend that outwards into large scale politics.
I didn't even know that 26 year-olds could be Prime Minister.
As long as it's not right in the middle of their exams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9SQR04rVfU
Pitt was in fact 24 when he first became Prime Minister.
But not the Pitt who got all the good stuff named after him.
What's going on where the NDP is more acceptable to a certain kind of conservative voter?
The concept of "red tory" which comes from Britain is sometimes actually articulated in Canada. It means a conservative who believes in society and community, not just individual freedom and markets. In Canada it refers to social conservatives who believe in curbing or resisting the power of wealth and corporations for the common good.
I read somewhere that part of NDP's downfall was a refusal to run a deficit, which gave them a DNC-in-1995 vibe.
105. No, that was his dad. You think you have problems with Bushes and Clintons...
General Forbes Avenue named the place Pitt the oldster.
108: Biden should sit this out, but if he does usurp power and rules as a new man of steel, I'd vote for him in his sham elections.
The moral of the story is that if you win the battle, you get to have the better road named after you, instead of being stuck out in the declining steel town suburb like the last guy who couldn't pull it off.
He did worse than the French. Their guy got a less declining suburb, a reasonable Pilsner, a university, and the electric utility.
Speaking of the Canadian election, I'm semi-seriously curious whether Trudeau is the first guy named "Justin" to be head of government anywhere (at least in the last couple hundred years, old Greek dudes need not apply).
The concept of "red tory" which comes from Britain is sometimes actually articulated in Canada. It means a conservative who believes in society and community, not just individual freedom and markets. In Canada it refers to social conservatives who believe in curbing or resisting the power of wealth and corporations for the common good.
Is this the same as the "Christian Democrat" parties in Europe?
Speaking of the Canadian election, I'm semi-seriously curious whether Trudeau is the first guy named "Justin" to be head of government anywhere (at least in the last couple hundred years, old Greek dudes need not apply).
The same question arose when someone named "Kevin" became leader of Australia.
A good place to look for previous Justins might be the Caribbean. You never know what kind of names will pop up. Current Caribbean heads of state include "Gaston Browne", "Roosevelt Skerrit" and "Donaldson Romeo".
116:
Overlaps it to be sure. There the basis for resisting the total power of liberal individualism is religion, usually Catholicism.
I'm still waiting for a reign of terror to be lead by someone named "Heather." If it doesn't happen in the next 25 years, I don't think it is going to happen.
115: apparently yes, at least since sixth-century Byzantium. Wikipedia has a reasonable list. "Justin" simply wasn't a very common name before the second half of the 20th century.
120 - thanks, though I wouldn't be surprised if they missed someone in the Caribbean or West Africa.
My guess would be that heads of government is one of those areas where they're unlikely to miss any recent ones. They've got Roosevelt Skerrit and all his predecessors back to independence.
Found one: Justin Ahomadegbe-Tometin, premier of Dahomey 1964-65. Not on Wiki's list of Famous Justins.
South Carolina has a governor named Nikki. I figure she's a trailblazer for women with stripper names in high powered occupations.
Though if we want to look at future trends, I TA'd a masters course a last year, and for the women, there was a direct correlation between how stripper the name sounded and performance in class. The best student had a name that was something like Brytni.
There was a Mom at the playground the other day shouting "Dynasty, come here!" which I guess could have been either a stripper name or calling tonget the family together.
I don't think "red torys" actually exist in any practical sense, anywhere, though there a people who see themselves that way. The rubber meets the road on what kind of limits on capitalism you're actually willing to vote for, and red toryism always errs on the sode of authority, which means the bosses.
129.1: she obviously had an older sister called Dallas, and the mother wanted to keep the theme going. ("And here's their little brother, Son of Anarchy".)
It could be worse. If people are naming kids after 80s TV shows, right now there's a kid with the first name "Cosby" who will never be able to hand anybody a glass of water in his whole life without hearing a horrible joke.
As for Canada, nice work I guess. Though, say what you will about ties between the US Democratic party and white supremacy, at least our Democrats were never led by Michael Ignatieff.
South Carolina has a governor named Nikki Nimrata
133: both actually. Nikki is her middle name.
Empress Brityni Topps rose to power by exploiting her huge tracts of land. Some say she acquired them later in life, rather than being born into them.
Nimrata
Even more stripper-sounding.
Because I'm a feminist and cheap, I've never even seen a strip club.
I guess. And sometimes they do write the names of the strippers on the outside.
Because inside a strip club, it's too dark to read.
141 is not true, but it does get you strange looks.
at least our Democrats were never led by Michael Ignatieff.
"Led by" is being a bit generous to Ignatieff, the absentee kingpin who couldn't even be bothered to prep for the candidate debates. But yes, Ignatieff was a godawful choice, a real embarrassment to the party.
b) Canadian voters are too stupid to understand that they live in a Parliamentary democracy (I'm still not clear which is the case, since I also am stupid) caused everybody to switch to the Liberals is also stupid.
I guess I'm too stupid to understand this criciticism. It's a multi-party system with first-past-the-post elections. If you're in a riding where the Conservative candidate can expect to pick up 35 to 40 percent of the votes, while the anti-Conservative vote might be split between two other parties, doesn't it make sense to calculate which of those two parties has the best chance of beating the Conservative? If you really want to prevent a Conservative win, that is.
Not that I can say why, but doesn't it seem like something about pure FPTP disincentivizes coalition politics? Look what happened to the Lib Dems.
but doesn't it seem like something about pure FPTP disincentivizes coalition politics?
Yes. In a two-party system, FPTP makes sense. But add a third party to the mix (a third party that is more than a fringe party, I mean), and FPTP can produce some ridiculously skewed, and completely unrepresentative, results.
E.g. (and from the front page of Strategic Voting 2015), in 2011, 37% of voters in the electoral riding of Don Valley East (a district in Toronto) cast their ballots for the Conservative candidate, while 63% of voters in that riding chose a candidate who was to the left of the Conservative (Liberal: 35%; NDP: 25%, and Green: 3%). The Conservative candidate won, of course, even though the majority of voters voted not-Conservative. And with FPTP, why would the Conservative have any incentive to compromise? The winner takes all; and a win is win, isn't it?
Ths is how Harper and his goon squad managed to rule/misrule Canada for almost a decade. They never had the support of more than 40 percent of the electorate, and often had significantly less than 40 percent.
A multiparty system really requires some sort of proportional representation in order to be fair and representative.
But since Canada's electoral system is FPTP, not PR, sometimes the only pragmatic, and yes, principled, course is to vote strategically.
New Democratic Party in the streets, Bloc Quebecois between the sheets.
I think that's what bill was getting at.
148: It was a done deal when Kristol said he would run.
150: Heh! What does Kristol say about Paul Ryan for Speaker, I wonder?
150: And sealing the deal, Dick Morris with a perfectly-timed video (released today) discussing why Biden is getting into the race!
You can see the hooker's toes in the background.
152: Ha! Try to top that, Bill Kristol!
On the OP, I got a spam email just now, from Debbie Wasserman Schultz just raving on and on about how much we love Joe Biden and how we should take a moment to thank him for everything he's done, and look at all these accomplishments and strengths.
I got a spam from the Michael J. Fox Foundation this morning, which was pretty clever.
I guess that's in light of 148.
Seems to me that the only reasonable way to have both FPTP and coalition politics is collusion. If party A and B would be happy with a coalition, then in the weeks before the election, A candidates drop out where the B candidates are winning decisively, and vice versa.
It's good he's not running, but he put that announcement off for too long. Fox News is onto him.
Wow. Busted. They sure are good at figuring out when Democrats are trying to distract from Benghazi.
Tantaros' bulb is a special kind of dim.
12 things Obama used to distract from Benghazi:
#BringBackOurGirls
Climate change
Syria
Trayvon Martin
"Partisan politics"
IRS
Michael Sam
The Navy Yard shooting
The Associated Press spying scandal
Terror threat and embassy closures
Gay rights
Big Bird
143/145: Wouldn't ranked choice/instant run-off voting accomplish the same positive outcome, with much less change to existing govt structures than proportional representation?
Note: Proportional representation would be appealing to me in some ways, although you'd wind up with a lot more Mormons in office, so there's that.
106 would also describe Republicans in MN from about 1975-1995. Your "little old ladies in tennis-shoes" green Republicans were close cousins.
Your "little old ladies in tennis-shoes" green Republicans were close cousins.
Alas, there are no Red Tories left in Canada. The Reagan-Thatcher revolution (which reverberated through Soviet Canuckistan with Brian Mulroney's bargain-basement version: "Greed is good," and [this said sneeringly] "Canada is not Sweden") did away with them, mercilessly banished them to the dust heap of history. So: what happened to the little old ladies in tennis shoes? Something similar, I'm guessing.
And I seriously cannot believe this dude is now the PM of Canada. He has a tattoo; and an impressive party trick (he falls down stairs).
A time traveler from 1985 would never believe that Canada in 2015 would have the best-looking head of government in the world.
Margaret Sinclair (Justin Trudeau's mother) was quite stunning. The apple didn't fall far from that tree, I guess.
IRV (or AV, or PV) entrenches two-party systems - cf Australia. STV with multimember wards can do proportional(ish) results but in all honesty you may as well do MMP then.
It's not much more better to have the Reds win half the seats and the Blues win half the seats 40 when the Yellows got 20% of the first preferences.
IRV (or AV, or PV) entrenches two-party systems - cf Australia. STV with multimember wards can do proportional(ish) results but in all honesty you may as well do MMP then.
It's not much more better to have the Reds win half the seats and the Blues win half the seats 40 when the Yellows got 20% of the first preferences.
165: More impressive that Bush's fall from a Segway.
143: Strategic voting makes sense in a single district, but unless every single district the Liberals were slightly more popular than the NDP, it doesn't make sense that it would lead to an across-the-board collapse. Why didn't the NDP keep their lead in districts where they already had one, in particular where they were the incumbent.
168: Part of it is probably changes in grooming patterns, but his dad was pretty much goofy looking.
Of course, for reasons of policy and/or copyright, Wikipedia always leads with a bad shot.
172: Many people who wanted Harper out were prepared to vote for whichever party could beat the Conservatives. Close to the election support for the NDP appeared to waver in Quebec (for a bunch of reasons, including that the other two parties attatcked them as the frontrunner.) The left's fear of splitting the vote against Harper was very strong and people who would normally have voted NDP focussed instead on backing the party they thought could win nationally.
But why does it matter? If the NDP + Liberals form a majority, why don't they get to form a government?
If they don't coordinate perfectly district by district, they don't get a majority.
Yeah--there's a conflict between strategic voting at the national level and strategic at the riding level. In theory people in each district could have agreed on their preferred anti-Conservative who'd better represent local interests--say with Liberals dominating in Atlantic Canada and Ontario while the NDP gets Quebec and BC, with local exceptions--but that seems much harder to coordinate.
169: Is there any theoretical work on why, or under what conditions IRV leads to two party dominance? There seems to be a lot of anti-IRV noise with arguments literally of the form "it just does" and I'd like to read something a bit more convincing.
My riding's a good example of that. Almost always Conservative historically. Which way would they go, if not Conservative? Possibly Liberal, because we're in Ontario. But we're a farming area and local farmers hate the Liberals. Some farmers have a soft spot for the NDP because of Tommy Douglas, or they don't like the proposed trade agreement. People in town often vote NDP. So NDP is the way to vote, but...what if it's a really close election between the Liberals and Conservatives nationally, which more and more it appeared it would be? We over-corrected for that.
Hopefully the Liberals will realize that in many areas their support is shallow and could easily go towards NDP-like thinking, so they should be respectful of NDP views even if there's not an explicit coalition.
Seems like top-two like California has now might work better for a place with three major parties. If Liberals and NDP routinely get a majority of the vote put together, and Conservatives are in first- or second-place, then in most cases you go on to a runoff where the two can join their strength.
(I'm still skeptical of top-two here, as it was intended and is being used to give the moneyed "center" more power at the expense of party voters, but who knows, maybe it makes conditions ripe for a Working Families party that counteracts that.)
||
This seems like a genuine achievement: the FCC is going to cap federal/state prison per-minute phone rates, including fees! Caps for jails too, but higher, not sure why.
|>
Wiki research into Canadian politics has revealed to me the Sons of Freedom, a Russian emigree religious group who are awesome:
A very small minority of the Freedomites were noted for their arson campaigns...Targets included their own property and that of other Doukhobors to further exhibit their dislike of materialism...Most of these acts were committed in the nude
Also, they blew up a bridge. They were pissed because the government kept stealing their children.
OT: Apparently wanting to run two different versions of SAS on the same computer makes me the asshole.
185: Very possibly. You might want to run one or both in a VM.
I'd rather be the asshole than learn what "VM" is. It isn't a compatability problem. It's a somebody doesn't want to pay $60 issue.
