Questions on Framing and Perspective
Slate is portraying yesterday’s United States election results as being bad for liberals. Among their reasons:
1. Kentucky elected a Tea Party/Freedom Caucus Republican who promised to repeal Kentucky’s health exchange and put people on Federal exchanges. Governor-elect Bevin also promised to roll-back the Medicare expansion done by outgoing and term-limited governor Steve Beshear.
2. Ohio rejected a ballot measure which would have legalized medical and recreational marijuana; and
3. Houston rejected an ordinance that protected LGBT people. The Houston vote is depressing especially because the campaign seem to have succeeded because of a stupid scare tactic.
However, there are other ways to see yesterday’s election results.
4. The Democratic Party added three seats in the New Jersey state legislature including seats that have been Republican controlled since the early 1990s.
5. The Democratic Party now is the majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. This could give a hand in redistricting because the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania appoints the fifth chair of the redistricting committee which already comprises of two Democratic and two Republican voters. This potentially makes it easier for the Democratic Party to get Congressional seats in Pennsylvania.
6. Jefferson County, Colorado recalled their controversial Tea Party school board.
7. Ohioans were not so much concerned with legalization but dislike the cartelization of Ohio’s proposed referendum because it gave a monopoly to ten growers. Even Marijuana advocates were appalled by this factor.
8. There is a question of saying and doing. It is easy to take about repealing health care. It is much harder to take away healthcare from 500,000 people and prevent new enrollees. This is make it or break territory for the GOP.
So, was yesterday a rout for liberals and the Democratic Party? On paper, it seems like yes but there are other examples of the GOP suffering bad defeats. What might be happening is that red states are getting more conservative and blue states are becoming more liberal. Maybe people want drug reform but not in ways that encourage crony capitalism and cartelization. Kentucky seems like a huge victory for the GOP because they have not had many Republican governors, but it could also be a trap on the limits of Tea Party promises.
I am not saying that yesterday was rosy for the Democratic Party and liberals, but the results are more murky and complicated than Slate is making them out to be. There were also some bright spots for liberals that can pay dividends down the road. There can also be signs that both parties are becoming more regional in ways that are dangerous for the nation as a whole. Houston is probably the most troubling result for liberals, but I am not concerned with the loss of legalized marijuana in Ohio considering how horrible the measure was. I’d probably vote against the cartel as well even though I favor legalized marijuana. Kentucky is a wait and see situation. I am pretty happy with the results in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Jefferson County, Colorado. I think that Slate said liberals got routed because the media needs to phrase things as a horse race with clear winners and losers instead of as something that is more complicated.
The fundamental question is whether we can use yesterday as some sort of prediction for how turnout for Hillary vs. Not Hillary will be.
Of course, the answer is that we can’t.Report
There’s a hypothesis that the Houston result is Good News! For Hillary! because it keeps a segment of her base more energized by what’s potentially at stake should she lose. (And this despite her being a very late arrival to the ally train)Report
It’s an off-off-off year election. Not a Presidential year, not even a House/Senate year. I wouldn’t use it as a prediction of anything, because turnout was undoubtedly both low AND skewed entirely by local factors. (The people turning out are, by and large, likely REALLY unhappy about something. Or scared.).
The Houston thing was irritating, mostly because of the campaign against it. No, you mouth-breathing morons, it’s not about allowing men in the women’s bathrooms. It is, in fact, entirely about making sure all WOMEN can use the farkin’ women’s bathrooms. Idjits.
I hadn’t screamed at a radio add in years. This one had be angrily shutting off the sound ever time I heard one of those ads.Report
The protestors looked like they were all in their 70s or older.Report
And virtually every freakin’ one seemed to think it was about men coming into the women’s restrooms.
The ad campaign was a disgusting pile of sleaze, even by political ad standards, and bankrolled by ‘Good Christians’ by and large.Report
If it’s bigotry to assume that someone’s a man based on their appearance, then how is the law not letting men into women’s bathrooms? Anyone who is going into a women’s washroom could identify as female; therefore, anyone who wants to is allowed to go into a women’s washroom.
That’s the concern; not of assault by trans people, but that it functionally says any guy can go in the women’s washroom.Report
I remember reading that Ann Rice described herself as a homosexual man trapped in a woman’s body. But since she presented her gender as a woman, she musta been a transgendered homosexual man trapped in a woman’s body.
Question: What toilet should he or she use?Report
Ann Rice should use the women’s washroom.
Basic rule: if you can pee standing up (without those handy funnels they make for hikers), use the men’s room. If you can’t, use the women’s. If you’re not comfortable using either, use the nice big single-person washrooms that practically every public building has.Report
No. I will continue to use the woman’s room. Of course, if you have a problem with me, then you can hold it, or search around for a single-occupancy that maybe isn’t available.
Your bigotry isn’t my problem.Report
The Houston thing is really depressing. How can people hate me that much?Report
@veronica-d
Well they don’t know you like we do.Report
A lie can run around the world while the truth is still getting her boots on dear lady, one just has to keep on keeping on; and avoid Houston when possible.Report
So make up a better lie than the next person, and let the truth ghost in afterwards like a cat on a foggy night.Report
Really, you think it’s “hate”?Report
Sarcasm trigger warning.
Of course it must be hate b/c everything the repubs do is hate filled. It’s the lazy feel good assumption. Of course the actions by Houston’s mayor didn’t help when the city subpoenaed sermons given by local pastors who opposed the ordinance. No, it must be those haters.Report
Can you kindly explain to me why we have mens bathrooms and womens bathrooms?
Surely if your critical thinking is so keen, you can at least explain that.
[open question, anyone can chime in]Report
No, I don’t claim to know the answer or have ever studied it. I’m surprised you don’t know. Maybe you should Google it?Report
If I didn’t know the right answer, I wouldn’t be asking.Report
We sort of have moved kind of quickly from “the question of why we have separate bathrooms for men and women does not even need to be asked” to “I have no idea why in the hell we even have separate mens and womens bathrooms”.
And, anyway, isn’t the question not one of “why do we have separate bathrooms for separate genders anyway, I can’t even” but “why shouldn’t a person who was misassigned a gender at birth be able to use the proper gender-segregated bathroom for their true gender?”Report
Jay,
I’m asking a fairly obvious question that requires a good deal of lateral thinking to understand (and a willingness to relinquish both liberal and conservative frameworks of thought).
No, the question is not about “who gets to be a woman” because that would be too easy… this is a deeper and more subtle question, which may provide some insight as to why Houston voted the way it did.Report
I think that the answer isn’t terribly subtle at all.
Houston is still stuck in the part of the past where gender and sex are pretty much co-extensive and such things are not recognized as being social constructs in any interesting sense.
Or a certain percentage of their voters are, anyway.Report
The answer to my question, about why we differentiate into boys and girls restrooms has a pretty emphatic answer.
It will help to explain the fervency of Houston’s response.
… besides, have you ever asked a feminist to explain the difference between men and women?Report
It kinda looks like there is an implication that attribute sorting is rigid in this context.
Have no idea what a feminist would say, but that would probably vary between different types of feminists?Report
Just don’t ask Germaine Greer b/c liberals didn’t like her answer.Report
Well, the TERFs have one answer. The Feminist Allies have another.Report
Joe,
Indeed. The answer, as a lot of things are answered, is rape.
(It is also the reason why women go to the bathroom in groups).
In which case, Houston’s response can be understood in a more criminological sense:
To whit, they are looking at the potential harms caused by bad actors acting in bad faith.
To the voters, it doesn’t matter how much they’re hurting a few scattered transsexuals.
Because everyone has a sister, or mother, or girlfriend, and it’s very possible to have some malefactor claim to be transsexual. It erodes the ability to be preventative about something that people honestly care about.
I say all this, without really passing judgement or saying that Houston is wrong or right. I’d like to bring out that this isn’t just people being idiots.Report
Luckily, rapists will only go into women’s restrooms if *allowed by law*.
And luckily restrooms have no areas that men could possibly *hide* inside, perhaps with handy seats they could sit on, while waiting for single women to show up.Report
I think that the problem is that, under the old rules, a bepenised person who was in a ladies’ room was there because of either a mistake, bad intent, or some horrible disaster that made the men’s room completely unavailable.
In all three cases, the problem was the bepenised’s and the onus of resolving the misunderstanding was on said person. (“Lady, I know this looks bad, but, seriously, there was a dead body in the men’s room. I just need to crap before I call the cops and there’s no way I am walking through that crime scene to do so.”)
Under the proposed rules, there is now a fourth option which places the onus on the (presumably cis-gendered) woman walking into the washroom and being startled.
Now, of course, if the men’s room is any indication, guys just piss and leave and it’s a 50/50 shot on whether they even wash their hands. Go in, do your thing, leave. There should be no genitalia involved in any public view.
But I understand that ladies’ rooms have couches and televisions and stuff so maybe things work differently in there.Report
It’s become such an issue that I’ve seen conventions who explicitly state “bathroom policing” is something that’ll get you kicked out of the Con.
(Bathroom policing being, of course, hanging around the bathroom telling men or women they’re not sufficiently men or women to use the restroom they’re trying to get into.).
The world is full of a**holes.Report
Right.
It’s really nice, by the way, that my employer has a policy like this. Also, I’m in a pretty trans-friendly area — which means only about 30% of my neighbors think I’m subhuman. (I’ve seen surveys. And don’t read the comments on local articles about trans stuff.) (Except you can read the comments here. Mostly.) (Actually, not all of the comments.) Anyway, my point is, I’m legally a woman, so if anyone messes with me I’ll just tell them to fuck off sideways. They can call the cops, and if the cops get there before I leave, I’ll just show them my ID. But whatever. Mostly I just get dirty looks. Which, I don’t even care. Those people are entitled to their narrow, shitty existence.
Which, they’re dark clouds. I’m shine.Report
Now you’re just stalling.Report
The Victorians!Report
If we’re going that route, I’d say that the problem was likely one of civilization growing dense enough that the need for outhouses with more than one seat arose.Report
You have separate toiletry facilities in cultures where there aren’t outhouses, often enough.
Also, rome.
To think on this some more, you have communal bathing in many cultures (Japan and Sweden, to name two)…Report
Rome, for all of its merits, had a handful of issues with female personhood.
How long does the tradition of communal bathing go back in these countries?Report
When was the urinal invented? Or its predecessor (the trough, I guess?)? That might have been the moment when we said, “Hey, these folks use this space differently. Maybe it makes sense to have different spaces. Also, the men have their peepees hanging out.”Report
The first urinal was called “A Tree”.
Which brings us to “separate washrooms” having a prereq of “washrooms” and those have a prereq of “indoor plumbing”.
Good god. How did large gatherings of people do this sort of thing prior to indoor plumbing?
WE NEED A BETTER HISTORY OF POOPING.Report
For what it’s worth, in my professional career, I have never worked in a PreK where the children used sex-specific bathrooms.Report
Multiple stalls? Single stall? Stall and urinal?Report
Private bathrooms. Though at my current hippy school, there is no door on the bathroom and children often talk to their peers while waiting and ‘share’ the bathroom as the just-finished child will wash hands while the next child up uses the toilet. They all seem unfazed by sharing the space in general or with opposite-sex peers.Report
The trough is perfectly usable by men and women. Japanese public toilets do use this for women.Report
I always thought it was so that women wouldn’t have to smell trucker ass at the rest areas.Report
One reason is longstanding social mores. The vast majority of people of both sexes are more comfortable with it.
Another reason, as pointed out, is safety for women.
A third reason is that men’s washrooms have urinals. If you have one washroom for both sexes, then either you have to get rid of the urinals (which means longer lines for washrooms than the guys would otherwise have, becaus stalls take up more space than urinals – that’s why women’s washrooms always have longer lines at events, not because we decide to sit in the stalls and read a book for half an hour or something; well, that and because we don’t pee against a wall when the lines are long), or both women and men need to be okay with women seeing guys peeing whenever they go into a washroom. And the vast majority of both women and men are not okay with the latter.Report
The Houston thing really cheesed me off. “We can’t stop those horrible menz from entering the women’s room under false pretenses and taking advantage!”
I’m really pretty cheesed about that.Report
And then those men probably go on to vote multiple times, in person, without any fake ID!
At some point, I wish the media would grow a spine and when presented with a claim that ‘We need a law to stop X’, their immediately response would be ‘Please list all the times X happened’.Report
It will be interesting to see what Bevin does to the health care in Kent. If he goes after it like he promised that might make some nifty ads for Hillary ie: see R’s want to kick people off their insurance. Kentucky has been an odd state for years with going hard for R’s at the prez level but electing some D’s at the state. Not sure how much it really says about the prez election though.
These results are all over the place with the R’s doing well in the south but losing other places. That isnt’ really all that much of surprise.Report
They seem to be changing a bit. Bevin helped the GOP win a lot of state-wide offices. The only state-wide offices that Democrats won in Ky were Attorney General and Secretary of State. They also still control one house in the legislature.
Most of Bevin’s votes came from Eastern Kentucky which is the poorest part of the state but coal is king.
http://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2015/11/4/9665842/republican-inequality-future-loopReport
I’m pretty sure that the NHS access of the good people of Kent, England is safe from Bevin. ;).
If you mean Kentucky, its going to be interesting. My guess is that Bevin will try to change it even though he knows that he can’t because the Democratic Party controls one house of the Kentucky legislature. This will allow him to go through the motions of repealing the ACA in Kentucky without doing so in practice.Report
Also for your 2nd list 9) Jackie Biskupski.Report
I shook the hand of one of those newly elected Supreme court justices.
(He was at my polling station the whole day.)
He actually ran with a decent platform of judicial reform
(which is better than most years, when actually having a platform is a miracle.)
The last time we had 3 supreme court justices up at once was 300 years ago.Report
RE: Houston question 1
It’s interesting to compare this map
http://gregsopinion.com/maps/2012G_President.html
to this map
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/media/Election-Result-Map-272818.php
The correlation between support for Obama and support for the question seems week.Report
The Slate piece does a pretty good job of laying out why they think Tuesday was bad for liberals. There is ample room to disagree, but I think the best route to doing that is engaging with their actual position.Report
Geography, geography, geography. Across the old South from the Atlantic to Texas, then up the Great Plains and some other parts of the Midwest, it was a bad day for the Democrats and a good day for the Republicans. OTOH, in addition to the things mentioned, Salt Lake City elected an openly gay mayor, earlier in the week Montana’s Medicaid expansion scheme was blessed by the feds [1], and more importantly than the school board in Colorado, the voters across that state passed a referendum allowing the state to retain and spend the excess tax revenue from legal marijuana sales [2]. More importantly than the badly flawed Ohio marijuana initiative, the voters there overwhelmingly passed the redistricting proposal.
[1] The remaining three states in the Mountain West that haven’t expanded are Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The Republican governors of all three favor expansion. The Utah governor and Republican leaders in the legislature have agreed on a framework for expansion.
[2] An explanation of Colorado’s excess revenue system is beyond the scope of this comment. Or a full-blown post. Most importantly, this proposition passed in every county, not just in the big counties along the Front Range that passed the original marijuana legalization.Report
It is easy to take about repealing health care. It is much harder to take away healthcare from 500,000 people and prevent new enrollees.
That’s not *quite* what Kentucky is talking about. They are, as you say earlier, talking about removing their (much loved) state exchange called ‘Kynect’ and just using the Federal one.
In fact, as a lot of people don’t make the connection between Kynect and Obamacare, and a lot of people really like Kynect while being ‘anti-Obamacare’, what Republican are talking about doing looks a lot like ‘Removing Kynect and making everyone use Obamacare’.
…I’m pretty sure they have not fully thought this out, politically speaking.Report