Well, let's see what happens in this incredibly expensive, symbolic race. Can Democrats finally take advantage of the wave of anti-Trump sentiment and take a solid red seat, or will GOP unity under pressure hold out again? It's a very close race, which means it's all about who has the better turnout in this election.

Personally, I'm in a funny spot on this. On the one hand, of course I want to see Ossoff beat Handel - this could start giving Democrats some momentum for future elections, and I'm for that. Handel is also an objectively terrible candidate, and I'd rather not reward the disgusting strategies the GOP have been using to push her (calling Ossoff a terrorist sympathizer because he's not anti-immigrant, using the recent baseball shootings as a political point against Ossoff); these actions shouldn't go rewarded with a Handel win. On the other hand, Ossoff is... kind of a centrist Democrat (being vehemanently against singlebpayer healthcare, for example), which in future primaries this will be used as something to tamp down progressive support ("Want to win elections? Run an candidate like Ossoff, who runs on a similar platform as Obama and Clinton!"), which would be a bad thing for Democrats to hold onto moving into 2018 and 2020. Win the battle, lose the war - I'm not liking the forecast if he wins and Democrats take the wrong message from the campaign. I've something to lose either way, here, so I suppose no result is any worse.

Then again, I can see this as a win/win, too, so best of luck to the both of you.

To the Democrats, a win is a win, especially in the South where is has been solid red for the most part outside of the major cities and Florida, and even in those places, they aren't exactly solid blue. You got to remember that progressive politics as we know it is viewed as heresy in much of the Bible Belt, and if the Democratic Party does indeed go farther left of center, they will most likely follow suit because they would get something they want out it, even if they disagree with some of their own party's rhetoric.

I do agree that it is a potential double edged sword for the Democrats in the sense that being the party of Anti-Trump will work in the short term, (2018 primaries and possibly the 2020 election) but they cannot repeat the same mistakes as they did before, otherwise they can kiss any social progress that was made under Obama goodbye.

At 6/20/17 02:46 PM, orangebomb wrote: You got to remember that progressive politics as we know it is viewed as heresy in much of the Bible Belt...

According to... what? Not going to expand on this here (it'd take us off topic real quick), but I'll actually need to see some numbers showing that's the case rather than just take that quote at face value. A topic for another place and time, though.

Jon Ossoff faces an uphill battle there, even if he leads most polls by a point or 2. It all depends if Democrats can get people out to vote in large numbers to offset the challenges of voting in those state districts, which gives all the advantages to Republican candidates. You have all these voting laws by conservatives designed to make it harder to vote if you are poor or a minority (voting ID laws, cutting registration days, closing polling station or cutting their hours - leading to longer lines or traveling longer distances to them). Then you have Republican gerrymandering, which has drawn up district by race, or other demographics, to make those districts non-competitive to other parties, or harder for them to win.

At 6/20/17 10:21 PM, Sause wrote: It looks like Karen Handel won

Yup, not by a huge margin though. Same happened in SC. Democrats have got to get better at turning out the vote strategies and if the Supreme Court hands down rulings against partisan gerrymanders and continues to strike down voter ID laws, this could all conspire to be a real last gasp situation for the GOP. There's definitely going to be celebration here, but I think there's still cause for concern and worry on the Conservative side, especially if at any point their "Screw the rest, we'll just back Trump to win the base" strategy falters.

At 6/20/17 10:57 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 6/20/17 10:21 PM, Sause wrote: It looks like Karen Handel won

Yup, not by a huge margin though. Same happened in SC. Democrats have got to get better at turning out the vote strategies and if the Supreme Court hands down rulings against partisan gerrymanders and continues to strike down voter ID laws, this could all conspire to be a real last gasp situation for the GOP. There's definitely going to be celebration here, but I think there's still cause for concern and worry on the Conservative side, especially if at any point their "Screw the rest, we'll just back Trump to win the base" strategy falters.

I wouldn't hold my breath on that. We got 5 conservative justices out of the 9, and they are incredibly sympathetic towards corporation, and social conservatives. They are the ones who unleashed citizen united, which made corporation into people, when it comes to unlimited political donations as free speech; and they opened up gerrymandering by Republicans in Southern states with reasoning like uncle ThOMas "I don't see no racism, do you?". They know where their butter comes from, and it's unlikely they'll rule against gerrymandering in any non-partisan way. Maybe Kennedy will side with the left leaning justices, because he doesn't want to make it look to obvious that the supreme court is more partisan than objective - or full of conservative activism.

So it looks like Handel won, then. I've seen $30+million blown in worse ways, but not by much.

After sleeping on the results, it hits me as eerily similar to the 2016 campaign, as if it were a microcosm of it: Democrats heavily outspent the Republicans in it, used a lukewarm centrist candidate (though this time there wasn't much choice, to my knowledge), polled relatively high, squeaked a narrow loss. Of course there are plenty of factors outside that make this a different candidate entirely (local, deep south, actually different candidates, etc.), but I do find the comparison interesting, at least.

Now it's time for me to do exactly what I thought Democrats weregoing to do and use this as a nice sample of what a campaign like this looks like. Hey, like I said, it was pretty much a win/win for my personal agenda; sorry for the loss, but perhaps we can all use this as a learning experience (money doesn't mean you win, centrists are not slam dunks).

Hey, I could be totally wrong: centrists are really going to get the best results, and the country is just overwhelmingly Republican. It sure would be nice if Democrats gave the more solid left wing a shot with their support while the elections are still pretty inconsequential like this one, just so we had some comparisons.

the Progressives and bernie bros are crying screaming its their turn vowing for a Tea Party like populist platform, but I don't see the momentum the Tea Party had with these guys much less enough to effect a mid term which is usually very right leaning for the last few of them.

At 6/21/17 12:52 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: the Progressives and bernie bros are crying screaming its their turn vowing for a Tea Party like populist platform, but I don't see the momentum the Tea Party had with these guys much less enough to effect a mid term which is usually very right leaning for the last few of them.

I actually was curious what their response would be - Cenk seems pretty pissed, lol. Yeah, things tend to swing against the majority in things like midterms and such, so I could see a heavy Democrat win in 2018/2020 if they don't play games with their primaries and let people vote for who they want... which isn't a given, seeing how Democrats lately have been rather aggressively resisting opening the primaries up, and actually getting upset at the idea of primarying out unpopular Democrats (that's the message behind the whole "Unity" and "Stronger Together" bullshit - support our current guys, don't say anything bad about them or else we might lose even MORE seats).

*Shrug* We'll see. Again, it might not be a bad idea to at least try and support something different while it's not too detrimental to do so (during individual special elections vs during the midterm).

At 6/21/17 01:21 PM, Gario wrote: I actually was curious what their response would be - Cenk seems pretty pissed, lol. Yeah, things tend to swing against the majority in things like midterms and such, so I could see a heavy Democrat win in 2018/2020 if they don't play games with their primaries and let people vote for who they want... which isn't a given, seeing how Democrats lately have been rather aggressively resisting opening the primaries up, and actually getting upset at the idea of primarying out unpopular Democrats (that's the message behind the whole "Unity" and "Stronger Together" bullshit - support our current guys, don't say anything bad about them or else we might lose even MORE seats).

its not going to happen in the midterms for the dems. their chance is in 2020 and the populist/progressive demographic is so spread out and niche I doubt they could get the momentum in the next 18 months for the primaries, especially with the DNC being resistant and holding all the power (seats) and funding. of course the whole berniebro progressive Justice Democrat thing is at a pragmatic stand point a joke.
the only way they could get seats is in an open race with the previous seat holder being dead and the DNC not naming their own choice.

At 6/21/17 01:40 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote:

At 6/21/17 01:21 PM, Gario wrote: I actually was curious what their response would be - Cenk seems pretty pissed, lol. Yeah, things tend to swing against the majority in things like midterms and such, so I could see a heavy Democrat win in 2018/2020 if they don't play games with their primaries and let people vote for who they want... which isn't a given, seeing how Democrats lately have been rather aggressively resisting opening the primaries up, and actually getting upset at the idea of primarying out unpopular Democrats (that's the message behind the whole "Unity" and "Stronger Together" bullshit - support our current guys, don't say anything bad about them or else we might lose even MORE seats).

its not going to happen in the midterms for the dems. their chance is in 2020 and the populist/progressive demographic is so spread out and niche I doubt they could get the momentum in the next 18 months for the primaries, especially with the DNC being resistant and holding all the power (seats) and funding. of course the whole berniebro progressive Justice Democrat thing is at a pragmatic stand point a joke.
the only way they could get seats is in an open race with the previous seat holder being dead and the DNC not naming their own choice.

Actually, many of the recent elections have been very close, very close, considering a few years back Republicans had 20+ leads over their opponents in conservative leaning districts. They use to be able to coast through them, but that is changing, with Democrats closing the distance, and that is something when there is a lot of gerrymandering against them.

Right now, the media is trying to create drama, pandering to a media crazed populace with short attention spans, and telling them that any Democrat wins are going to be referendums against Trump, ignoring the fact that they are in strong conservative districts, and the chances of any Democrat winning them is small. Given another year, with Trump's incompetence, and repugnance, I say that Democrats will have a stronger chance to gain seats, even in strong conservative districts.

At 6/21/17 12:52 PM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: the Progressives and bernie bros are crying screaming its their turn vowing for a Tea Party like populist platform, but I don't see the momentum the Tea Party had with these guys much less enough to effect a mid term which is usually very right leaning for the last few of them.

The Tea Party was basically a very angry, ginned up, low information ultra Conservative base that was helped along by corporations and other interests that thought of them as "useful idiots" for the most part. Then they took the damn thing over....bad deal, bad deal.

The Progressives, and the radicals seem to have the anger....but not the numbers and not the resources yet. But to say they're just a minority to be ignored says more about how in touch with things you are vs. them. These elections were very close, in the Democratic Gubernatorial for Jersey the Sanders type candidate came in second to the eventual winner, and led well ahead of the other choices. The anger is there, something is there....the question is will it gel into something sustainable that will work in 18 and beyond? Not sure yet honestly. I think the advantages of the Tea folks was it was an easy game to message: We won't govern, we'll fuck government up, we'll break, and we'll rend, and we'll tear, and somehow from the ashes we'll get what we went. That message can't work for Progressives because their policies and ideas both rely on government and governing (and expanding that in many ways), and on being able to put out a thoughtful message that usually can't gel into sound bites. That's been one of the problems they can't kick.

At 6/21/17 09:44 AM, Gario wrote: So it looks like Handel won, then. I've seen $30+million blown in worse ways, but not by much.

That $30M could have gone towards at least six other races during the midterms next year that could actually be competitive. The Dems are so hellbent on a symbolic victory/referendum against Trump that they're blowing through cash like drunken sailors on crack and ignoring the fact that they STILL don't have a coherent message for voters to get behind. "Vote for this person because Trump/the other person is terrible" is not a message.

The Dems could be working on a message and platform, but no, they're doubling down on the identity politics and cronyism that turned a lot of people off in 2016. Add to that doubling down on the Russia conspiracy theories, and you have a recipe for disaster in 2018 and 2020.

At 6/21/17 08:36 PM, RydiaLockheart wrote: That $30M could have gone towards at least six other races during the midterms next year that could actually be competitive. The Dems are so hellbent on a symbolic victory/referendum against Trump that they're blowing through cash like drunken sailors on crack and ignoring the fact that they STILL don't have a coherent message for voters to get behind. "Vote for this person because Trump/the other person is terrible" is not a message.

Republicans spent a bunch too. Don't act like it was one sided, because it wasn't. Both parties took a keen interest in this race as a test case that could shape how they planned to approach the mid-terms next year and what they're strategies should be.

The Dems could be working on a message and platform, but no, they're doubling down on the identity politics and cronyism that turned a lot of people off in 2016.

How does that apply to this election? Everything I'm reading was The Dem candidate trying as hard as he could to do none of what you just said, to be a bland, middle of the road candidate promoting "new leadership" and "change". He tried as hard as he could to never directly attack Trump. Put the talking points away and look at the actual thing under discussion.

Add to that doubling down on the Russia conspiracy theories, and you have a recipe for disaster in 2018 and 2020.

Lol, you do know that "Russia Conspiracy" has like three independent investigations right? Talking points are bad for just this reason.

At 6/22/17 04:24 AM, SolidPantsSnake wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr4RYY7Mpw4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztJlZ3Ndbw4

The anti Ossoff ads from the Handal campaign gave me a good chuckle looks like smearing your opponent still works, even if it didn't for Hillary.

Call me naive, but I'm going to say Ossoff was a lukewarm candidate at best, and wasn't able to rouse the left nearly enough to win (gerrymandering played it's role, too). The target of those ads were never going to vote for him, and thoae that would supporting the left were likely not impacted by that tripe.

I could be 100% wrong on that, but I'd like to hold oit on at least some faith in humanity and assume that's the case; those ads were the stupidest I've seen.

At 6/22/17 03:03 PM, Sause wrote:
Considering there was "hit list" of other Republicans on that madman's dossier, it might have a chilling effect on Republican public appearances on the campaign trail.

Nah, Republicans have been refusing to make public appearances long before this due to the absolute vitrol they generate at their own town halls. Kind of cowardly of them, to be honest - if your constituents don't like what you're doing (and yes, Democrats in their area count as their constituents as much as Republicans are, believe it or not), then you better be ready to face the music.

At 6/22/17 02:41 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

At 6/22/17 10:01 AM, Gario wrote:

Call me naive, but I'm going to say Ossoff was a lukewarm candidate at best, and wasn't able to rouse the left nearly enough to win (gerrymandering played it's role, too). The target of those ads were never going to vote for him, and thoae that would supporting the left were likely not impacted by that tripe.

I could be 100% wrong on that, but I'd like to hold oit on at least some faith in humanity and assume that's the case; those ads were the stupidest I've seen.

I'm just going to call it right now and say that the Scalise shooting is really going to bite qite a few of the dems in the ass when midterms finally come around.

No. But it's interesting how Republicans are now using it to promote themselves with it, claiming they are victims, when they hold all the power in the country, and have nothing else to stand on but a disastrous president, a "mean" healthcare bill, a wall to nowhere, a Muslim ban that can't escape the courts, a lot of racism and hate, and divisive issues they blame the other side for when they control the legislature.

Here's a few boasts from GOP on the shooting:
"Liberals can't even shoot straight"

Shooting will win us the special election.

It's like you have a bunch of opportunistic vultures who think tragedies will help them. It's like when Trump boasted about how another Muslim terrorist attack in Paris would "probably" help far-right candidate Marine Le Pen win the election a couple of months ago. But then, again, they do help, but it becomes a bit concerning that they believe that they need these tragedies to happen, just like the gun industry needs mass shootings to increase gun sales, and membership to the NRA. And while many on the right believe that aggression against them, or mass attacks, will translate into votes, they also have a history of painting gun sights onto their opponents, or using wording that describes shooting them - as Sarah Palin did to Gabrielle Giffords.

But I think people are slowly catching on, and are getting tired of when politicians try to use tragedies for their own personnel gain, when there are more important issues at hand.

At 6/22/17 02:41 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote: I'm just going to call it right now and say that the Scalise shooting is really going to bite qite a few of the dems in the ass when midterms finally come around.

Lol no. Too much time will have passed, the 24 hour news cycle will have moved on with the equivalent of what used to be two years worth of shit. Trump will do 700 new blunders by then (at least I'm thinking), the special prosecutor may or may not have something damning, Congressional Republicans are said to be betting on the base and ignoring the rest (which could be very bad form, but not entirely unjustified given that people still seem to miss that the mid-terms are national phenomenon made up of an aggragate of local races and their geogrpahy, demos, etc). But what the mid-terms seem to boil down to is a very simple either or:

Either the people voting are rewarding the current President, or their punishing the current President. With historically low approval ratings, it seems to me Trump will lose at least his slim Senate majority, and could potentially lose the House as well (though I'm less inclined personally to believe that unless we get some major bombshell right before the election that starts to peal even the hardest of the hardcores away). I think too much was made of these special elections (which are notoriously bad mid-term predicters) because of the nature of the political story and the mechanisms of the 24 hour news cycle. Course, I've been wrong before, but I think simple truths and simple mechanisms will always hold true. Mid-terms are about motivation in the end, and the historical trends of that motivation are simple, an either or choice. Reward or Punishment.

National Approval Ratings by then should be good to tell the tale....

At 6/22/17 04:49 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

At 6/22/17 04:09 PM, EdyKel wrote:

At 6/22/17 02:41 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

At 6/22/17 10:01 AM, Gario wrote:

Call me naive, but I'm going to say Ossoff was a lukewarm candidate at best, and wasn't able to rouse the left nearly enough to win (gerrymandering played it's role, too). The target of those ads were never going to vote for him, and thoae that would supporting the left were likely not impacted by that tripe.

I could be 100% wrong on that, but I'd like to hold oit on at least some faith in humanity and assume that's the case; those ads were the stupidest I've seen.

I'm just going to call it right now and say that the Scalise shooting is really going to bite qite a few of the dems in the ass when midterms finally come around.

No. But it's interesting how Republicans are now using it to promote themselves with it, claiming they are victims,

Are any liberals getting stabbed or attacked for attending rallies? Nope they are the ones doing that shit.

I love how you are dramatizing this shit (not to mention limiting the violence to just rallies, and rallies this year - excluding Trump ones last year), by exaggerating it, in hopes of fooling somebody into believing this partisan scenario of yours (actually, the conservative scenario) about the far left being out of control and violent. It's all a deflection from the elephant in the room.

Not only does it try to gloss over all the extremism and violence from the far right, by making you think the left is worse, it's also the only thing that the right can think of to get votes to their candidates. That's pretty sad, because they know they can no longer use Obama, or blame him for everything that goes wrong, now that their party controls government on all levels. So they are desperate to distract from their failed, or outright, bad policies and laws, with a new boogeyman, because using Muslim terrorist attacks are no longer enough to keep them in power.

And you are so desperate for attacks from the left that you are trying to proclaim any incidents that involve a trump supporter as a leftist's attack, before all the facts come out - doing the very same thing you did with the UT Austin stabber, and that one turned out to be some guy who had mental issues, and was seeing and hearing things.

But I think people are slowly catching on, and are getting tired of when politicians try to use tragedies for their own personnel gain, when there are more important issues at hand.

No people are not catching on. After every shooting people push gun control, and bonus points if the shooter had a history of mental illness they can push healthcare as well.

Son, there has been no new gun control laws in the past 20 years on the federal level, and a ton of state gun laws have been reversed by the supreme court over the last 10, with gun companies now immune, by a congressional law, from civil lawsuits. This country has the highest gun violence among the richest countries in the world, and mass shooting continue to rise every year. Yet, to think that gun control groups can benefit from any mass shootings, while always being accused of using them to destroy the 2nd amendment, or take people's gun away, when the people doing the accusing them are using that to scare people into buying more guns, and vote for right leaning candidates, are not only benefiting financial and politically, but are guaranteeing that nothing changes, an that these incidents will continue, so the cycle can continue again.

Of course, you are running away from the rest of my argument with this distraction, because you can't dispute the simple fact that Republicans, or conservatives in general, profit off of violent tragedies, more so than the left. Heck, you even supported this by saying that the attack on the congressmen by a Bernie Supporter was going to help out Republicans in the 2018 elections.

At 6/23/17 05:21 AM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

At 6/22/17 11:23 PM, EdyKel wrote:

At 6/22/17 04:49 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

At 6/22/17 04:09 PM, EdyKel wrote:

At 6/22/17 02:41 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

I'm just going to call it right now and say that the Scalise shooting is really going to bite qite a few of the dems in the ass when midterms finally come around.

No. But it's interesting how Republicans are now using it to promote themselves with it, claiming they are victims,

Are any liberals getting stabbed or attacked for attending rallies? Nope they are the ones doing that shit.

I love how you are dramatizing this shit (not to mention limiting the violence to just rallies, and rallies this year - excluding Trump ones last year), by exaggerating it, in hopes of fooling somebody into believing this partisan scenario of yours (actually, the conservative scenario) about the far left being out of control and violent. It's all a deflection from the elephant in the room.

If you actually bothered to read on the incidents linked and check your facts you would see that an overwhelming majority of them are not considered terrorist attacks. You have a lot of holes in your argument buddy. Saw this a lot. looks like somebody is exaggerating but not me. I will give you this though what is classified as terrorism is pretty one sided but no more gas lighting please.

Actually click the links in your source and you will see this very often.

Son, I know you love to find any gotcha moments in my argument so you can ignore the rest of the stuff you can't dispute, but I didn't mention terrorism, and nor did the article. It just said terror in the title, and calls all the stuff "incidents". Maybe you should reread it, instead of exaggerating what I said.

The whole point I used it was to show where a lot of the violence is coming from, and to counter yours. It lists violent incidents from the left, the right, and Muslim extremists. That's all.

At 6/23/17 11:34 AM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

At 6/23/17 11:17 AM, EdyKel wrote: Son, I know you love to find any gotcha moments in my argument so you can ignore the rest of the stuff you can't dispute, but I didn't mention terrorism, and nor did the article. It just said terror in the title, and calls all the stuff "incidents". Maybe you should reread it, instead of exaggerating what I said.

I can smell your bullshit on the way over on the east coast. I can re read my other thread where you did refer to far right "incidents" as terror attacks more than once, and the article itself references whether or not terrorism charges were filed for each and every single one of them.

Ah, so this is what it's about: Claiming I inferred something in a post in this thread from another post in a different thread. Son, this is how squirrely your arguments are. You bring up incidents of the violence from the left (at rallies), then accuse me of calling everything the right does as terrorism, in an attempt to deflect and shift blame to me for your own failing argument because you are unable to dispute what I said in any other way.

If you want to discuss what I said in the other thread about far right terrorism, then, by all means, continue it in that thread, not here. I'm going to be a bit harder on you from now on, and won't be distracted from your main argument that you are running away from with distractions. You claimed that far left terrorism is going to help the GOP win election, which means, you need them to happen, and the only way for that to happen is if the right doubles down on partisan rhetoric and far right policies.

At 6/23/17 12:52 PM, SolidPantsSnake wrote:

Moved to your thread.