StrangeSox

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 03:44 PM) NC's Voter ID law was struck down by a federal court today. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/feder...-provision.html https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CojB8jxWIAAlJtB.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Coi_-08WIAQXTn7.jpg

who wants to play "spot the terrible things on this chart" with me? I'll go first: Trump's plan will generate 5.3 million million jobs!

NC's Voter ID law was struck down by a federal court today. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/us/feder...-provision.html

Trump bragging about how he was going to make the RNC the bestest, yugest convention ever, so go you wouldn't even believe, your head would spin thanks to his master showmanship and now quickly distancing himself from having anything to do with the planning at all really now that the DNC has beat it in the ratings every night amuses me.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 03:24 PM) I think that's accurate and then he couldn't actually run on his record, it was weird. He was in a difficult spot because a major part of his record was basically a beta version of Obamacare, but running hard against Obamacare was going to be what the 2012 election was about no matter who the nominee was. Couple that with an economy that was limping along but moderately improving, no major foreign policy disasters, no real scandals for the incumbent, and an increasingly difficult EC map and it was always going to be a really tough election for Romney to win.

CNN "instant polls" are meaningless garbage, but here's the results from Hillary's speech last night: CNN Instant Poll Clinton Speech: 60% More Likely To Vote For 6% Less Likely To Vote For 33% Not Much Effect Trump was 56% more likely, 34% less likely, 10% no change (+22) https://twitter.com/Phil_Mattingly/status/7...src=twsrc%5Etfw Move country in the right direction: Clinton 82% Trump 73% Very positive reaction Clinton 71% Trump 57%

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 02:50 PM) The amateur political strategist in me says Romney campaigned hard right to fight off his challengers in the Republican primary, but while he was doing that, Obama's allies successfully made a caricature of him as Gordon Gekko-style cartoon villain that carried into the general election. Romney tried to pivot in the general election but pretty much stuck with him until the first debate where Obama was off his game and blew it, voters saw Romney presenting himself as a moderate conservative, but Obama rebounded after that and never looked back.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trum...it-dnc-speakers

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 02:39 PM) Romeny's problem was he relied on bad information and pulled up before the thing was over. I legitimately think he could have won the election four years ago (than again, I like Mitt). They thought they were going to win based on some bad internal polling/unskewing, but they never stopped campaigning hard right to the end. He never really had a chance.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 02:15 PM) The last two Democratic presidents have been some of the most charismatic orators this country has ever had (i'll include Reagan in that category too). There is really nobody who ran on either side who's like that. Hillary isn't one of those and Trump CERTAINLY isn't with his 5th grade vocabulary. Liar, Trump has assured me that he has the BEST words. (bigly)

Her speech itself was fine, she's not a particularly great speaker but she's not terrible, just doesn't sound natural like her husband or Obama. Speeches may be important for winning elections, but speeches are not very important at all when it comes to actually being able to govern.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 01:57 PM) There is so much of an interest and political gain in fear mongering that most people don't believe this anymore. RUSSIAN AL-QAEDA ISIS SLEEPER CELLS WILL KILL US ALL! At least with Russia, the threat of near-complete global destruction was real and the world was actually on the brink of it a couple of times.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 01:47 PM) To be honest I'm a little biased as I think some of the surge of money into politics is this idea of an expensive GOTV operation, and "how could you not have tried everything". I don't think they are necessary to democracy and would be first to go with publicly funded elections. Working with a very local campaign was infuriating for my mind. No polls, your GOTV is you and some other friends/family handing out flyers, zero indication the night of the election of who's going to win, just sitting there mashing F5 on the county election results page as the results start coming in. Then beer and chicken wings to celebrate! eta: the counterpoint to this is that when I lived in Woodridge, the long-term mayor retired and there were four or five candidates up for election as his replacement. It's a non-partisan office, so no easy D/R heuristic for what their views might be, every campaign profile was meaningless (they had all been board of trustee members), and the campaign websites didn't ever talk about what they'd do. If even one campaign had approached me/come to my door and explained what the candidate was actually looking to do, they probably would have had my vote.

I did not and will not read your link (going back to find it now)

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 01:24 PM) Romney's campaign wasn't that bad. I'd say he was solid-starter level. It's just that Obama is better at campaigning than just about anybody in politics right now. Their digital GOTV/organizing effort (Orca) was a massive beached whale, but the rest of the campaign was solidly and professionally run (except the delusion that they were going to win right up until it was very, very obvious how the vote counts were going). Solid-level starter, sure, the point there is "two people who clearly belong on the professional field with one being better versus one person who belongs on an MLB roster and one person who'd get cut from his no-score-keeping tball team.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 01:17 PM) In that article I sent, it appears to only matter by about 1%. Not insignificant, but not a game changer. Sure, but that's in normal years. Orca might have sucked, but Romney still had a full-blown campaign running starting way back in the primaries. Here we are on July 29, and Trump still doesn't have any campaign whatsoever in Pennsylvania. I guess I'm thinking of it as an MVP-level campaign (Obama) and a Replacement-Level campaign (Romney) versus an All-Star level campaign (Clinton) and a T-ball level campaign (Trump). eta: the campaign's listed number for Iowa is also out of service, lol

The state of Trump's state-level organization in PA, probably his most crucial state, as of yesterday: This is why I was asking about what effect GOTV has had on actual vs poll numbers in previous elections. If anything this year matters, this has to matter, right?

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 12:09 PM) I think the anti any concept of TPP is the stupidest and most shortsighted thing happening in left politics today It's pretty hard for me to find any realiable information on it really given all of the hyperbole surrounding it. But the left has been opposed to G7/G8, WTO, NAFTA etc for a long, long time.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 12:30 PM) What do you think scouts that are sent to watch Sale report back at this point? "Uh, ya he's still good."

Trump basically pining for his own Watergate: Guilliani advising Trump to "tag" Muslims on the watch list with electronic bracelets: Quintuples (?) down on NATO comments, apparently still doesn't understand that NATO commitments aren't about "paying" and whether Estonia meets the 2% mark for military spending is completely irrelevant On what his response to continued Russian aggression (e.g. Crimea) would be: "Secret Plan" looks an awful lot like "No Plan" to many people e.g. Nixon's secret plans to end the Vietnam War in '68 (turns out those plans involved sabotaging the Paris peace talks), plus "Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?"

There was a decent amount of Republican hand-wringing about Obama's comparatively soft criticism of NAFTA back in '08. I wonder how so many of them seem to have reconciled those concerns 8 years ago with Trump's full-blown protectionist trade policies.

Kaine flip-flopping on the Hyde Amendment (now for it again) sucks

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 11:31 AM) I don't know Jas, he overplayed his hand to disaster in 1998. Almost everyone involved in the speaker of the house from in on is now disgraced. Romney wiped the floor with Gingrich in debates. His intellect is way overblown. If you want to know why Dutch Colonialism in the Congo was actually A Good Thing, he's your man! Gingrich is technically correct (the best kind of correct) as he points out, feelings/emotions do matter. But (imo, of course), there's one party in this country that has actively cultivated a "facts don't matter, experts are useless, just go by your gut" mindset that's culminated in Presidential Nominee Donald J. Trump.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 11:24 AM) PS: I think a lot of people should realize that Greg isn't that much different than a lot of the American voting public. God damn if that isn't the most cynical take on American politics and unfortunately true :(

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 11:11 AM) Is there really a debate going on about the degrees of slavery? Slavery is bad. Investigations about the differences in slavery throughout cultures or even throughout the chattel slavery system of the United States and different eras/regions can be interesting, but nightly cable news pundit shows aren't exactly the place those sorts of discussions could ever be fruitful. For some full-blown "slavery wasn't that bad!" garbage, The Economist's review of "The Half Has Never Been Told" was an instant classic.