StrangeSox

How gerrymandering can swing elections I've read a little bit about some gerrymandering cases working their way up to the Supreme Court right now. Ideally it'd be nice to have national non-partisan districting.

I did not realize that the RNC has been under a consent decree dating back to 1982 due to intimidating voters at polling places. Shockingly, it's happening again. QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Oct 27, 2016 -> 07:55 AM) Guilford County (basically Greensboro) had only 1/25 of its early voting stations open before today. Neighboring Davidson County, where I live, had 5/5. Btw, I appreciate that multiple local offices on my ballot have only Republicans running. Good effort, Democrats. Even with that, The Upshot is estimating that Clinton's up 22 points in early voting in NC so far.

Six of the seven most populated counties in Texas have seen record numbers of voters. Still sure how much is regular voters just wanting the election to be over or inspired new voters. https://twitter.com/MatthewReynaTX/status/7...src=twsrc%5Etfw

In some of those counties, early voting polling places went from numbers like 15 and 16 to 1. That was for the first couple of days though, with additional polling places opening yesterday and tomorrow. Still though, it's absolutely ridiculous and just another really, really obvious piece of evidence as to what NC was doing and why Shelby County is probably the worst decision in a century.

man at least the cubs can say they weren't no-hit through 6 innings

She wins with just the bolded ones.

at least based on MLB gameday, this ump's not giving the corners at all edit: after the first two outs I was thinking that Arrieta was going to cruise out of the inning but that didn't exactly happen

That honestly doesn't seem to reflect more recent posting here. The number of links to WaPo, NYT, NPR, 538 etc. compared to say Mother Jones or a random liberal blog (which even then a comparison to a white nationalist site like Breitbart is ridiculous) is pretty heavily in favor of mainstream media outlets. There are fewer non-liberals posting here, sure, but if anything it's seemed to me that supporting links have gone more mainstream than they were a while back. I put forward a few thoughts as to why I think a Clinton vs Kasich race would be close, maybe even tilt in favor of the GOP's chances. I think that, for either party, there's a baked in floor of 35-40% of the vote no matter who the candidates are given how polarized the parties have become. I really don't see how either of those statements is "extremist partisan."

Ok? It's a discussion of a counterfactual and not something with a provably right answer. We'll just agree to disagree on what a hypothetical Clinton vs Rubio/Kasich/etc match-up would be.

Pointing out months of polling data shows her winning comfortably isn't propaganda though? I'm not saying that she would or wouldn't have won against Rubio or Kasich or Romney or whoever, I'm just saying that assuming it would have been a lock isn't necessarily backed up by solid evidence. Trump's had a solid floor of 38-40% despite pissing off every single voting bloc except non-college white males. Clinton would have a floor at least that strong without alienating everyone. I would probably lean towards the odds being in the GOP's favor, I just don't think it'd be such a clear runaway is all.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 05:28 PM) With seeing how close this election still has been with an absolute loon running against Clinton, I can't see how that wouldn't be the obvious conclusion. Except for a blip for a couple of weeks in September, she's been at or near Obama '08 levels of blowout. Election could be over when the polls close on the eastern seaboard. It would definitely have been much closer, but Democrats still enjoy a structural advantage in the EC and Kasich was the guy who couldn't finish better than 4th in GOP primary. Plus as more recent polling shows, a majority of Clinton voters are voting for Clinton rather than against Trump at this point.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 05:01 PM) http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/buckle-up-folks This is so weird. Possibly being naive but hard to believe an 8 pt hillary win would still not see a dem senate. That's in disagreement with both The Upshot and 538, who currently give the Dem's mid-60% chances of winning the Senate. Will be interesting to see what the early voting trends in NV, FL and NC are over the coming days.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 05:02 PM) I said we should just ignore each other but you weren't willing to accept. So I won't take all your garbage while you respond to every post as the left's condescending version of greg. I did tell you I will respond as I want, but I don't think I've actually responded to your posts since then. More to the point, the conversation you jumped into to insult me had nothing to do with you. I wasn't giving you anything, garbage or otherwise. It was an on-topic response to Jenks who, despite having strong disagreements with many times over the years, doesn't seem to have any animosity towards me nor I him. The worst part is that your insult didn't even make sense! I was comparing Moore watchers to D'Souza watchers--if I struck you as some huge Moore fan for some reason, why do you think I would make that comparison? It doesn't even make sense!

Republican base isn't going to learn anything from the past year

Obstruction now, Obstruction forever!

Great post! If you're going to cry to me via PM to not respond to your posts because you can't handle it, don't respond to mine and attack me with some extremely dumb attempt.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 04:02 PM) Pot calling the kettle black. Yes, that was the point I was making. Moore's audience is the mirror image of D'Souza's.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with FNC now that Ailes is out and Rupert Murdoch is aging. One of his two sons supposedly hates the heavy pro-GOP way the network's been run for years and would like to restore some credibility. And if Trump actually does launch Trump TV (campaign FB stream seemed to be testing the waters earlier this week), will FNC try to position themselves as the more moderate Republican voice against the likes of Breitbart etc?

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 12:32 PM) The latter is what I'm thinking of. Vouchers are too confusing for people. The problem is coverage. Maybe partner with a hospital group to identify areas of vet populations that aren't close enough to mental health or outpatient care and create some provider spaces. But hard to believe that a medicare system with our existing medical provider structure isn't better than the provider model - especially for capacity issues. Vouchers are also a way to shift responsibility. If the system is in the government's hands, failures can appropriately be placed on policy or bureaucracy. If you're just going to do block grants or vouchers, you can not appropriately fund the system and then say "hey, we gave you vouchers, it's your fault you didn't spend the money wisely!"

The Upshot is tracking and analyzing early voting in NC http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/up...te-tracker.html lots more details at the link. and some Texas info

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 12:32 PM) There's a larger phenomenon here I think, and people like Moore are just one part of it. The way that everything is all broken up and self-segregated in media, groups of people end up just talking to themselves, and they can't get anyone else to pay attention to them. I read a few things in the past few months where the conservative pundit class is starting to see the drawbacks of their strategy. They've been tremendously successful at creating their own media and pushing the bias angle that they've been able to influence the way the rest of the media covers stories for a while, but it's starting to have its limits. Everyone else sees Fox and other places on the internet like it are SO openly and unapologetically partisan that everyone who's not already a committed Republican basically ignores them. They start to notice that they have stories that instantly go viral and Fox News spends most of the day talking about the latest scandal, but only conservatives talk about it, and every other media outlet ignores it as partisan spin. It doesn't matter if it was a legitimate scandal or not, that's not how people perceive it. It works in reverse too. Other stories don't get into conservative media. I'll see if I can dig it up again, but several months back one of the bigger conservative talk radio guys was talking about this issue in an interview. They've lost the "gatekeepers" of information. They've conditioned their listeners for decades to not believe anyone who isn't telling them what they want to hear. So even when it's a reliably conservative voice who starts to push back on something, the response is the same as if it had been the dreaded New York Times-they're liars and traitors to the cause. Just look at what's happened to Glenn Beck this year and really to a lot of the conservative media who didn't fall in line behind Trump. This certainly happens to people of all political stripes and even in areas outside of politics, but it seems like much of the conservative movement has been built on the whole premise of fleecing the base and convincing them that they should only ever listen to you. I'll have to see if I can dig that report up, too, but something like 90% of all tea party group money raised in the last 6 years just went into the people who run the various groups/orgs' pockets rather than into funding campaigns or anything. And of course Trump's whole campaign seems to be a big personal grift that's paid out millions to fly him back and forth from NYC every day and millions more on his own properties. edit: here it is, Charlie Sykes interview on NPR. You've always had the nuttier fringe websites like World Net Daily, but you're seeing them and even crazier stuff like InfoWars get credibility from the GOP candidate for President at this point.

That's what Bill Clinton was talking about when he called our current system "crazy," right? Like if you were starting from scratch, no one would ever set out to design the current system we have with employer-provided health insurance being the primary vehicle for coverage for everyone not in retirement age, a whole separate system for people 65+ that's just fully socialized, patchwork medicaid and SCHIP programs, etc. etc.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 11:09 AM) I think it was John Oliver that made the point - who is that movie directed to? What fan of Michael Moore needs to be convinced that Trump is a terrible choice for President? Mirror image of whoever Dinesh D'souza videos are targeted at.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 11:56 AM) I think they need to decide whether this gov-provided system is capable of being fixed. I have my doubts considering it's funding. They tried that "Vet's Choice" voucher system or whatever it was called starting a couple of years back, and that didn't work so hot either. QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Oct 26, 2016 -> 12:16 PM) I wonder would it be cheaper to just give them some form of heavily subsidized insurance, and then just have the VA do administrative stuff (GI Bill payments, VA loans, injury rates, etc.) Medicare-for-vets might be a decent option.