Philip, the fact that it even occurs to you to bytch about this, both this little video and the larger issue of "voting rights" just means you and the other libs have no understanding or appreciation for the scale of the reckoning that's coming your way.
As for the filibuster? It survives for now but in the medium to long run it’s doomed. The cultural support it once had within the chamber is withering away and with that gone the filibuster will endure only until it is standing in the way of something that 51 Senators want more than they care about the filibuster.
I think an argument can be made that the GOP will be in that position if it gets a trifecta and a 52-54 Senator majority (though my real politic hunches say Mitch won’t want to axe it over abortion rights but I may be wrong and Mitch won’t live forever).
This could be right but I think you're missing the timing of the GOP two cycle two-step. After 2022, GOP probably has 245 Reps and 54 Senators and I don't think there's much purpose in doing anything about the filibuster since Demos have a veto point in the White House anyway.
The pressure will come when/if President DeSantis is elected in 2024 with 58 or 59 Senators. In that case, I think the filibuster goes the way of all flesh. But it doesn't have to work that way. There's a very good chance the GOP will have 60+ Senators then. And at that point, GOP can beat a filibuster anyway, so what's the point of getting rid of it.
I hesitate to write anything about this, because I'm not really following the libs' train of thought on this one.
On the one hand, libs are obviously butthurt over January 6. But, if libs can't get real Americans to care about that, I don't see why anybody else has to. But more than that, the things they want to do don't address that anyway. As I understand it, they _are_ being addressed by the bipartisan Senate group working on a narrow fix to the Electoral Count Act, but libs are opposing them.
The things they do want, they are calling voting rights, but like March pointed out above it's a bill about voting _policy_ not voting rights (and bad voting policy at that for the most part). I can't see how the libs agitation is supposed to help themselves, either in terms of policy _or_ politics.
Economics – the Administration also needs to lean harder on the media to reframe its successes. Right now the narrative doesn’t favor the things the Administration has actually accomplished. That’s got to change ASAP.
Real Americans aren't going to entertain any lib media feelgood economics propaganda while we're still living in the current virus regime.
Foreign Affairs – Putin may have bigger problems then invading Ukraine if the protests in Kazakhstan continue and spread. The Administration should make clear its support for those protests, and freeze the funds of any state that intervenes. And play up the old Cold War sentiments against Russia while they do it.
For better or worse, I don't see anything relating to Kazakhstan that materially changes Putin/Russia's intentions wrt Ukraine (and it's probably for the worse).
This is a big one, I fear. The science is unambiguous. A fully vaccinated and boosted adult teacher in a school with masking has trivial odds of catching Covid, lightning strike odds of getting seriously sick and lightning strike PLUS lottery winning odds of dying from Covid. There is no balance between teacher safety and the needs of kids (especially poor and minority kids) for in person learning. The latter’s needs utterly dominate the former. The unions have no ground to stand on if they are pushing for remote learning.
If this issue cuts any ice at all for you, get ready to start voting Republican.
The OP has the right framing, I think, but at least part of the conclusions are wrong.
Demo's have to think about 2024 because 2022 is a lost cause and 2024 is their first, and maybe last for a while, shot at competitiveness. 2022 is baked in the cake and has been for a while, and probably not just a five or ten seat thing either. I'd be shocked if GOP gets out of 2022 with less than 230 House seats and probably at least 240.
In any case, the goal for Republicans is the flip side of the OP: win enough House seats to where that chamber is, realistically out of play for 2024.
I do remember when you said that the one thing Trump fans wouldn’t forgive is failure to build The Wall. He failed, and they don’t seem even to realize that.
I actually don't remember writing that, tho some people do believe that. Truth be told, Trump isn't nearly as popular among Republicans as the worrier types would have you believe.
What is true is that the overwhelming majority of Republican voters don't want Democrats, MSM media people or NeverTrumpers taking gratuitous shots against Trump. They can't do anything about Democrats or media people, but when people like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger turn up, they can be primaried or kicked of their committees or whatever.
But for Glenn Youngkin et al, they can say, "He's over there doing his thing, and I'm over here doing my thing." GOP voters are ok with that, and so are other voters who would probably vote against Trump if he were on the ballot.
It's part of the reason why I don't think Trump is nearly as inevitable as the nominee for 2024 as some people seem to believe.
I think your read on 2020 was right. That it was really about regular old normie people being sick of the Trump show, more than any kind of mandate beyond the most mundane of Democratic aspirations. I also think you’re right that it’s not a matter of whether the Democrats lose their majority next year but how bad those losses will be.
Thanks.
Where I think you’re wrong is where I read you as suggesting some kind of permanence to the situation. The GOP will become subject to the same forces it’s riding. And whatever they are I don’t see some kind of Reagan level redefining of the landscape coming.
That's certainly where the downside if for the GOP. If somehow the GOP actually gets and keeps the coalition it is building, it's game over for the Dems. But Jay Cost and Sean Trende would say that's not gonna happen. New events will transpire, and they will cause some elements of the new GOP coalition to become dissatisfied and flip back to the Demos.
Extrapolating from prior situations in American history, I'd venture the same as well. But, the GOP has some reasons to hope that won't happen and it will get the benefit of some medium/long-term realignment.
First is maybe the voters aren't going to be looking for divided government, or to be looking to make tactical switches for policy gains. Normies will want to ignore politics for a while if they can, and there's a real chance that the GOP will have the opportunity to actually deliver on the failed promise of the Biden Presidency. And to that end, the constituents of the new GOP coalition will be more motivated to stay in the coalition than they otherwise might. Of course, this depends on the GOP not renominating Trump, but for various reasons I think the Trump renomination is less likely than most other political observers.
The other thing the GOP needs is escape velocity in 2022. Like you said, the GOP is going to win in 2022, it's a matter of how big. Well, it's gotta be big for the GOP, especially in the House. If the GOP actually does well in 2022, then the House will not be perceived to be meaningfully at risk in the 2024 cycle (the Senate too, will like to be perceived to be out of reach because of the set of seat the Demos will have to defend). IF this does happen, I think it will help the GOP long term because the would-be dissidents within the GOP can't actually flip anything by leaving, which will motivate them to stay where they are.
Right now, this is the best hope for America, and it's basically the photographic negative of the NeverTrump scenario. It's gotten very little media attention for reasons I don't really understand since the lay of the land is absolutely set up for this to go down.
He is talking about taking up weapons and killing Americans.
Well, when I want to know the ideas and thoughts of conservatives in America, well the Vice Mayor of Oroville, CA is next to the Word of God.
Chip, a long time ago and a galaxy far away Ronald Reagan was President. And he believed certain things, and he did certain things in furtherance of those beliefs (and some Dems in Congress helped him at least sometimes, but that complicates things a little bit to let's forget about that for now). And there were conservatives and Republicans, and there were also liberals and Democrats. (And IIRC you were one of us back then but that's another complication so again let's ignore that). And we were all Americans.
That doesn't mean that we were just one big happy family, because it didn't work that way. There were deep disagreements among us, and the sides were bitterly contested. And we were right and they were wrong, but again, details and complications. What's more important is that the disagreements were just that, disagreements, differences of opinion. So, when new information surfaced, or events transpired to reduce the salience of those issues of contention, the associated bitterness could subside as well. That's why, during the Clinton and GHWB years, we didn't have to have the same fights we did during the Reagan years.
Politics isn't like that any more. It would be better if it were, but it's not. Now, there are policy disagreements among us, but those are less important, relatively speaking. What's more important is the libs' disdain for us. The idea that we get to make rules, and libs have to follow them, is just unacceptable for libs. It doesn't make that much difference what the rules are, and it should be noted that libs did very well in Trump's America.
This is very important in the context of your ideas about the demographic disempowerment of conservative Christian white Americans. Specifically, you have it exactly backwards. It is possible, in some places around the margins, that white Americans resent other Americans and are looking to coalesce politically for the for the purpose of acting to the detriment of other Americans. But that's not really topical. The Emerging Democratic Majority was written in 2002(?) I think and the scenario it talks about has probably never looked further from reality.
The policies that conservative/Republican America would do if they could are sometimes stupid, but also sometimes prudent and judicious and most importantly they are legitimate, assuming we elect enough Republicans who support them. If we could clear this hurdle together we can dial down the culture of antagonism between us and move forward for the betterment of one nation, all of us.
We are the Americans who are motivated by the best interest of America. You are the Americans who strive for political power as best as you can, in order to obtain the capacity to speak in the _name_ of America, w/o the center of gravity of the responsibility to further the _interest_ of America.
Thanks for answering, Burt, that's the part I was wondering about. That's basically how this particular indictment reads (obv wrt a different set of charges).
So for the defendant in a case like this, what happens next? I mean, the defense doesn't really know what to argue against. Is this simply assigned to a trial judge, and the defense can make motions to that particular court? If so, what kind of motions would they make?
No Chip. The one who is at war with their fellow Americans is you. Frankly, I don't even get what the Ruby Bridges thing is supposed to be about. I'm ready to settle all the family business in the 2022 election cycle.
I don’t think the Virginia result was based on the national issues at all, except to the extent education is part of national discourse.
Well yeah, but that's a pretty big "but..."
For me, the lines connecting the Biden Administration, the teachers' unions, the virus, over the last 2 years or so are really clear. The upshot isn't just the bad policy relating to schools, though that was bad enough, it was that you had a very influential, numerous, affluent cohort of voters who thought they were pulling the strings on policy found out they were the marionette instead.
This is a big reason why the GOP is likely to be in the ascendancy for a while, and in particular why I don't buy the idea of America has to be a 50-50 demographic battle royale. We're going to regain a significant part of white-collar UMC white voters, we're going to keep everything we've gotten from white voters w/o college degrees, and make significant inroads among minorities, some big others medium-sized.
Second, its truly bizarre that this appeal is premised on the existence of some imaginary group of moderate centrist voters who are appalled by a random nutty professor who makes a stupid tweet, while being perfectly comfortable with torch-bearing mobs of white supremacists.
Well yeah, that's just the way the cookie crumbles for libs sometimes. The unfortunate reality for libs is that they can squeeze a lot of resistance juice _against Donald Trump_, _if_ Donald Trump is the center of our politics and right now he's not. There's a lot of other things that libs truly despise, like Tucker, Stephen Miller, Stop the Steal, Steve Bannon, etc, that Real Americans just don't get that worked up over. Not that they're in favor or support them, but Real Americans aren't going to quit caring about what they actually care about, in favor of opposing lib betes noire that they don't care about.
So, looking from the proper context, the Far Left thing actually has juice.
Yeah, that's certainly could be a factor. AFAIK there's no real data that speaks directly to this, but this could be because the libs were blaming the brass and deep state for the failure in Afghanistan. Or maybe was too tenuous to count. Like the nerds say, it was overdetermined.
It's why I'm a little reluctant to say that Mac was a bad candidate. Maybe Dems were a bad party.
Voicover: You know who else likes to eat strawberry jello? That’s right, Donald Trump” Those were the desperation gambles that didn’t land.
I certainly agree with you on that point, the question is where the desperation comes from. I think I might have seen that tween that Ken cites above us, and in any event, I have a hunch it might be right.
Your idea that the pandering caused the desperation, it could be but I think it's easier to see the national environment heading south for the Dems. IMO there's six big negative issues for the Dems this cycle: schools, CRT, the virus, immigration, inflation, and Afghanistan.
It's pretty easy to believe that schools are a bigger issue, in NoVa than immigration is, but that doesn't speak to either counterfactual, yours or mine. Like you said, there's a lot of resentment from otherwise D-leaning voters about schools not being open. Does that mean that if Mac just held a low profile on that issue that it would go away? Idk tbh, but the polls aren't necessarily saying that.
Burt, I made a comment in one of the other threads about the charges against Jackie Johnson one of the early prosecutors of the Arbery case, ie, one of them who didn't prosecute. I'm not a big expert on indictments, but I've never seen one with few if any factually allegations. Have you seen that, if so what do you think?
My guess is that those charges aren't really intended to be litigated but instead are a kind of performance art by lawyers. Is that possible, in general or here?
McCauliffe was going to be the next Governor precisely because he wasn’t fighting against entrenched power… he had entrenched power backing — all he had to do was run an imperfect campaign that didn’t veer into wackadoodle territory, which was his within his rights but not within his ability.
This is the conventional wisdom and it could be true. But in this case I think there's at least a good chance that it's not. I think you have to at least consider the possibility that Virginia was downstream of the national political environment and that environment turned decisively against the Dems during this campaign. And furthermore Mac knew this from public polling but also private polling and other info we didn't have access to.
Therefore some of the seemingly stupid and radical things Mac did were actually decently rational from someone who thinks he has a losing hand and needs to take some chances he wouldn't not otherwise take.
Open bet no one here has been willing to take: a craft beer or its equivalent on Arizona flips from trifecta red at the state level to trifecta blue in 2022. No exotic analysis, just “one of the parties is out of touch with Arizona voters, and it’s not the Democrats.”
You seem to know a lot about the politics of the Interior West, but frankly this seems ridiculous. The one thing the Demos have is that the AZ Republicans are one of the very worst state parties, where a lot of the time they want to fight each other way more than the Democrats.
But if that's not happening, and for the moment it's not, the political culture (and future) of the state is heavily Republican almost everywhere. So let me raise you back a couple. Mark Kelly will lose reelection to the Senate by more than 5%. There will be other "competitive" races where the Dems will lose by 10%, maybe even 15%.
Maybe you're hoping that swing voters in Scottsdale or Tempe are going to vote against Andy Biggs or Paul Gosar (who aren't on their ballot) yeah but that ain't happening. I suspect AZ will end up being the West Virginia/Tennessee/Arkansas/Missouri of the 2020s.
I was surprised not to hear more about this, especially as rare as it is.
I looked at the indictment, it seems really weak to me. It's ~3 paragraphs long, basically says the woman prosecutor violated her oath of office by not prosecuting this case, and some circumstantial details of who to and when she recused the case. Also that she told the police not to arrest the suspects, which if she doesn't intend to prosecute them seems legit to me. I was hoping some of the lawyers would say more about it.
As a generality, I think prosecutors should get way more heat than they do but my inclination is to think this is way overdone. Not that it's the only variable in the equation, but it's at least a little disappointing to me that only case like this I've ever heard of is about a prosecutor declining to prosecute. For me, there's way more misconduct in prosecutors over-prosecuting.
Many of the newspaper articles discuss how their contra partisans are mistaken in their definition of CRT and are arguing for or against a concept they do not fully understand. But because each side’s definition is based on prior assumptions and beliefs, the definition of CRT presented by the left and right is largely consistent with each side’s point of view and in line with their values.
One talking about this from the lib cable nets says that there is no CRT in the public schools, adn tbh I'm not sure what they mean by that. I mean Chris Rufo and his ideological friends pretty clearly have the receipts: consultant contracts, diversity conferences, curriculum committee documents, school board minutes, etc.
So what exactly do the libs mean? I guess they're saying that there aren't 11th graders going to CRT class in the same way they're going to trigonometry. But that's obviously weak sauce if that really is the point. There has to be something more than that?
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Senate To Take Up Voting Rights Packages, But Still Short of Votes Needed”
No Philip, I never said that. I'm pretty confident of that because because I never thought that. You must be confusing me with someone else.
(In fact, I didn't even vote for Trump in 2020, something I've noted here more than once IIRC)
"
Philip, the fact that it even occurs to you to bytch about this, both this little video and the larger issue of "voting rights" just means you and the other libs have no understanding or appreciation for the scale of the reckoning that's coming your way.
On “Filibuster Rule Change For Voting Rights Legislation Fails 52-48 in Senate”
This could be right but I think you're missing the timing of the GOP two cycle two-step. After 2022, GOP probably has 245 Reps and 54 Senators and I don't think there's much purpose in doing anything about the filibuster since Demos have a veto point in the White House anyway.
The pressure will come when/if President DeSantis is elected in 2024 with 58 or 59 Senators. In that case, I think the filibuster goes the way of all flesh. But it doesn't have to work that way. There's a very good chance the GOP will have 60+ Senators then. And at that point, GOP can beat a filibuster anyway, so what's the point of getting rid of it.
On “Senate To Take Up Voting Rights Packages, But Still Short of Votes Needed”
I hesitate to write anything about this, because I'm not really following the libs' train of thought on this one.
On the one hand, libs are obviously butthurt over January 6. But, if libs can't get real Americans to care about that, I don't see why anybody else has to. But more than that, the things they want to do don't address that anyway. As I understand it, they _are_ being addressed by the bipartisan Senate group working on a narrow fix to the Electoral Count Act, but libs are opposing them.
The things they do want, they are calling voting rights, but like March pointed out above it's a bill about voting _policy_ not voting rights (and bad voting policy at that for the most part). I can't see how the libs agitation is supposed to help themselves, either in terms of policy _or_ politics.
On “What Joe Biden Needs to Avoid in the 2022 Midterms”
Real Americans aren't going to entertain any lib media feelgood economics propaganda while we're still living in the current virus regime.
For better or worse, I don't see anything relating to Kazakhstan that materially changes Putin/Russia's intentions wrt Ukraine (and it's probably for the worse).
"
If this issue cuts any ice at all for you, get ready to start voting Republican.
"
The OP has the right framing, I think, but at least part of the conclusions are wrong.
Demo's have to think about 2024 because 2022 is a lost cause and 2024 is their first, and maybe last for a while, shot at competitiveness. 2022 is baked in the cake and has been for a while, and probably not just a five or ten seat thing either. I'd be shocked if GOP gets out of 2022 with less than 230 House seats and probably at least 240.
In any case, the goal for Republicans is the flip side of the OP: win enough House seats to where that chamber is, realistically out of play for 2024.
On “Yes, Democrats Do Have to Be Perfect”
I actually don't remember writing that, tho some people do believe that. Truth be told, Trump isn't nearly as popular among Republicans as the worrier types would have you believe.
What is true is that the overwhelming majority of Republican voters don't want Democrats, MSM media people or NeverTrumpers taking gratuitous shots against Trump. They can't do anything about Democrats or media people, but when people like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger turn up, they can be primaried or kicked of their committees or whatever.
But for Glenn Youngkin et al, they can say, "He's over there doing his thing, and I'm over here doing my thing." GOP voters are ok with that, and so are other voters who would probably vote against Trump if he were on the ballot.
It's part of the reason why I don't think Trump is nearly as inevitable as the nominee for 2024 as some people seem to believe.
"
Thanks.
That's certainly where the downside if for the GOP. If somehow the GOP actually gets and keeps the coalition it is building, it's game over for the Dems. But Jay Cost and Sean Trende would say that's not gonna happen. New events will transpire, and they will cause some elements of the new GOP coalition to become dissatisfied and flip back to the Demos.
Extrapolating from prior situations in American history, I'd venture the same as well. But, the GOP has some reasons to hope that won't happen and it will get the benefit of some medium/long-term realignment.
First is maybe the voters aren't going to be looking for divided government, or to be looking to make tactical switches for policy gains. Normies will want to ignore politics for a while if they can, and there's a real chance that the GOP will have the opportunity to actually deliver on the failed promise of the Biden Presidency. And to that end, the constituents of the new GOP coalition will be more motivated to stay in the coalition than they otherwise might. Of course, this depends on the GOP not renominating Trump, but for various reasons I think the Trump renomination is less likely than most other political observers.
The other thing the GOP needs is escape velocity in 2022. Like you said, the GOP is going to win in 2022, it's a matter of how big. Well, it's gotta be big for the GOP, especially in the House. If the GOP actually does well in 2022, then the House will not be perceived to be meaningfully at risk in the 2024 cycle (the Senate too, will like to be perceived to be out of reach because of the set of seat the Demos will have to defend). IF this does happen, I think it will help the GOP long term because the would-be dissidents within the GOP can't actually flip anything by leaving, which will motivate them to stay where they are.
Right now, this is the best hope for America, and it's basically the photographic negative of the NeverTrump scenario. It's gotten very little media attention for reasons I don't really understand since the lay of the land is absolutely set up for this to go down.
"
IIRC, that's basically the pov of Jay Cost and Sean Trende who I have a lot of respect for.
"
Sort of. I was certainly wrong about what was likely to happen in 2012 in 2010-2011, so take some comfort in that as you will.
"
Well, when I want to know the ideas and thoughts of conservatives in America, well the Vice Mayor of Oroville, CA is next to the Word of God.
Chip, a long time ago and a galaxy far away Ronald Reagan was President. And he believed certain things, and he did certain things in furtherance of those beliefs (and some Dems in Congress helped him at least sometimes, but that complicates things a little bit to let's forget about that for now). And there were conservatives and Republicans, and there were also liberals and Democrats. (And IIRC you were one of us back then but that's another complication so again let's ignore that). And we were all Americans.
That doesn't mean that we were just one big happy family, because it didn't work that way. There were deep disagreements among us, and the sides were bitterly contested. And we were right and they were wrong, but again, details and complications. What's more important is that the disagreements were just that, disagreements, differences of opinion. So, when new information surfaced, or events transpired to reduce the salience of those issues of contention, the associated bitterness could subside as well. That's why, during the Clinton and GHWB years, we didn't have to have the same fights we did during the Reagan years.
Politics isn't like that any more. It would be better if it were, but it's not. Now, there are policy disagreements among us, but those are less important, relatively speaking. What's more important is the libs' disdain for us. The idea that we get to make rules, and libs have to follow them, is just unacceptable for libs. It doesn't make that much difference what the rules are, and it should be noted that libs did very well in Trump's America.
This is very important in the context of your ideas about the demographic disempowerment of conservative Christian white Americans. Specifically, you have it exactly backwards. It is possible, in some places around the margins, that white Americans resent other Americans and are looking to coalesce politically for the for the purpose of acting to the detriment of other Americans. But that's not really topical. The Emerging Democratic Majority was written in 2002(?) I think and the scenario it talks about has probably never looked further from reality.
The policies that conservative/Republican America would do if they could are sometimes stupid, but also sometimes prudent and judicious and most importantly they are legitimate, assuming we elect enough Republicans who support them. If we could clear this hurdle together we can dial down the culture of antagonism between us and move forward for the betterment of one nation, all of us.
"
We are the Americans who are motivated by the best interest of America. You are the Americans who strive for political power as best as you can, in order to obtain the capacity to speak in the _name_ of America, w/o the center of gravity of the responsibility to further the _interest_ of America.
"
There's a bunch of things your comment _couid be_ about. But frankly, I'm at a loss as to what you comment _actually is_ about.
On “Nine Days Of American Justice”
Thanks for answering, Burt, that's the part I was wondering about. That's basically how this particular indictment reads (obv wrt a different set of charges).
So for the defendant in a case like this, what happens next? I mean, the defense doesn't really know what to argue against. Is this simply assigned to a trial judge, and the defense can make motions to that particular court? If so, what kind of motions would they make?
On “Yes, Democrats Do Have to Be Perfect”
No Chip. The one who is at war with their fellow Americans is you. Frankly, I don't even get what the Ruby Bridges thing is supposed to be about. I'm ready to settle all the family business in the 2022 election cycle.
"
Well yeah, but that's a pretty big "but..."
For me, the lines connecting the Biden Administration, the teachers' unions, the virus, over the last 2 years or so are really clear. The upshot isn't just the bad policy relating to schools, though that was bad enough, it was that you had a very influential, numerous, affluent cohort of voters who thought they were pulling the strings on policy found out they were the marionette instead.
This is a big reason why the GOP is likely to be in the ascendancy for a while, and in particular why I don't buy the idea of America has to be a 50-50 demographic battle royale. We're going to regain a significant part of white-collar UMC white voters, we're going to keep everything we've gotten from white voters w/o college degrees, and make significant inroads among minorities, some big others medium-sized.
Libs get the Karens and the feminists.
"
Well yeah, that's just the way the cookie crumbles for libs sometimes. The unfortunate reality for libs is that they can squeeze a lot of resistance juice _against Donald Trump_, _if_ Donald Trump is the center of our politics and right now he's not. There's a lot of other things that libs truly despise, like Tucker, Stephen Miller, Stop the Steal, Steve Bannon, etc, that Real Americans just don't get that worked up over. Not that they're in favor or support them, but Real Americans aren't going to quit caring about what they actually care about, in favor of opposing lib betes noire that they don't care about.
So, looking from the proper context, the Far Left thing actually has juice.
"
Yeah, that's certainly could be a factor. AFAIK there's no real data that speaks directly to this, but this could be because the libs were blaming the brass and deep state for the failure in Afghanistan. Or maybe was too tenuous to count. Like the nerds say, it was overdetermined.
It's why I'm a little reluctant to say that Mac was a bad candidate. Maybe Dems were a bad party.
"
I certainly agree with you on that point, the question is where the desperation comes from. I think I might have seen that tween that Ken cites above us, and in any event, I have a hunch it might be right.
Your idea that the pandering caused the desperation, it could be but I think it's easier to see the national environment heading south for the Dems. IMO there's six big negative issues for the Dems this cycle: schools, CRT, the virus, immigration, inflation, and Afghanistan.
It's pretty easy to believe that schools are a bigger issue, in NoVa than immigration is, but that doesn't speak to either counterfactual, yours or mine. Like you said, there's a lot of resentment from otherwise D-leaning voters about schools not being open. Does that mean that if Mac just held a low profile on that issue that it would go away? Idk tbh, but the polls aren't necessarily saying that.
On “Nine Days Of American Justice”
Burt, I made a comment in one of the other threads about the charges against Jackie Johnson one of the early prosecutors of the Arbery case, ie, one of them who didn't prosecute. I'm not a big expert on indictments, but I've never seen one with few if any factually allegations. Have you seen that, if so what do you think?
My guess is that those charges aren't really intended to be litigated but instead are a kind of performance art by lawyers. Is that possible, in general or here?
On “Yes, Democrats Do Have to Be Perfect”
This is the conventional wisdom and it could be true. But in this case I think there's at least a good chance that it's not. I think you have to at least consider the possibility that Virginia was downstream of the national political environment and that environment turned decisively against the Dems during this campaign. And furthermore Mac knew this from public polling but also private polling and other info we didn't have access to.
Therefore some of the seemingly stupid and radical things Mac did were actually decently rational from someone who thinks he has a losing hand and needs to take some chances he wouldn't not otherwise take.
"
You seem to know a lot about the politics of the Interior West, but frankly this seems ridiculous. The one thing the Demos have is that the AZ Republicans are one of the very worst state parties, where a lot of the time they want to fight each other way more than the Democrats.
But if that's not happening, and for the moment it's not, the political culture (and future) of the state is heavily Republican almost everywhere. So let me raise you back a couple. Mark Kelly will lose reelection to the Senate by more than 5%. There will be other "competitive" races where the Dems will lose by 10%, maybe even 15%.
Maybe you're hoping that swing voters in Scottsdale or Tempe are going to vote against Andy Biggs or Paul Gosar (who aren't on their ballot) yeah but that ain't happening. I suspect AZ will end up being the West Virginia/Tennessee/Arkansas/Missouri of the 2020s.
On “Ahmaud Arbery Trial Verdicts: Guilty”
I was surprised not to hear more about this, especially as rare as it is.
I looked at the indictment, it seems really weak to me. It's ~3 paragraphs long, basically says the woman prosecutor violated her oath of office by not prosecuting this case, and some circumstantial details of who to and when she recused the case. Also that she told the police not to arrest the suspects, which if she doesn't intend to prosecute them seems legit to me. I was hoping some of the lawyers would say more about it.
As a generality, I think prosecutors should get way more heat than they do but my inclination is to think this is way overdone. Not that it's the only variable in the equation, but it's at least a little disappointing to me that only case like this I've ever heard of is about a prosecutor declining to prosecute. For me, there's way more misconduct in prosecutors over-prosecuting.
On “A Different Look At How We Are Discussing CRT”
From the OP:
One talking about this from the lib cable nets says that there is no CRT in the public schools, adn tbh I'm not sure what they mean by that. I mean Chris Rufo and his ideological friends pretty clearly have the receipts: consultant contracts, diversity conferences, curriculum committee documents, school board minutes, etc.
So what exactly do the libs mean? I guess they're saying that there aren't 11th graders going to CRT class in the same way they're going to trigonometry. But that's obviously weak sauce if that really is the point. There has to be something more than that?
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