2018 US Midterm Elections (general thread)

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You're correct about the gerrymandering. A statewide office can't be gerrymandered.

However, voter suppression is an important factor in how Republican Kevin Cramer won North Dakota’s Senate race. Thousands of Native Americans were denied the right to vote because the GOP South Dakota legislature enacted a statute barring votes from anyone who doesn't have an established residential address. This statute was enacted after Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp won the Senate election in 2012 with strong Native American support. As Native Americans on reservations do not have such addresses (they only have P.O. boxes) they were prevented from voting.

This also skews presidential elections in favor of less-populated states.

The actual presidential vote is by the Electoral College. It's composed of a number of electors from each state. The number of electors from each state is equal to the number of senators plus the number of members of the House of Representatives. So Alaska with its population of only 710,231 gets 3 electors (2 senators plus 1 member of the House of Representatives), which is proportionately way out of line. California, New York, Illinois and Texas get only the number of their representatives plus two. Now that adds up to a lot of electors, but it still remains an imbalance in terms of population. So the less populous states have an inordinate influence on the Electoral College and therefore on who gets to be president.

It was set up this way by the founding fathers, the House to be elected by popular vote the Senate as the rural check on populism.

In order to change the constitution has to be changed which is not going to happen because rural states will not vote to strip themselves of power.

ROTFL

Markets liking the midterm results ...

Dow 26,064.49 +429.48 (1.68%)

NASDAQ 7537.83 161.87 (2.19%)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has just resigned.

That sneaky ‘lol possum.

Stupid casino gambling in my state now.
Missouri now has medical marijuana and you can grow your own.Lucky Mo,we voted for that in last election and nobody has got a card yet and we can’t grow our own.
Greyhound racing now banned in Florida.
No more hens, calves or pigs in cages in California farms.
Some good news along with the bad.

a blue ripple is still better than the stagnant swampage we woulda had otherwise.

It was a lot more than a ripple just not the wave everybody was talking about.

24 hours ago I wrote

All indications in the past 24 hours indicates that when I wrote that I was having a hippie type moment of blind optimism. The master bully knew what was coming an acted on it. It is now clear that not only does he not fear investigations and impeachment he wants it. When saying to the House no investigations or no deals he knows that he is validating the “unhinged” part of the left forcing the most relectant moderates to investigate full on. The replacement of Sessions by a person who said the investigation has gone to far and needs to be defunded is a dare to impeach. He is knows conviction is not happening and that he can use the “unhinged” dems to his advantage in way that would have ironically not been possible with the Republican House. With a Republican House he has been tied down by policy which bores him. Now he can fully concentrate on what he enjoys humiliating people.

I have heard some commentary that the Senate won’t go along with Trump’s demand to investigate the House if they investigate him. Those who believe this are living in the past. Any Republican Senator knows what will happen if they are not loyal to Trump. They will be forced out and constantly reminded by Trump that he forced them out for the remainder of Trump’s life. Ask Jeff Sessions and Mia Love about it.

Up until now talk of constitutional crisis ad civil war has been hyperbole, but the executive branch and one branch of Congress investigating another branch of Congress, oh boy.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 08 Nov 2018, 4:47 am, edited 4 times in total.

I suspect too many of my class of people did not vote.

As I count you as a member of the class of decent human beings, I think your conclusion is mistaken.

Green party in AZ helped out Trump's Senate candidate McSalley.

Republican donors should fund green party candidates in all states.

Cenk Uygur I think does a really great job at explaining the election results on the Young Turks:



He blames the Democratic leadership for this loss, because of their failure to get the messaging out. One big example he gave was how in Arkansas and Missouri, voters voted to raise the minimum wage, while at the same time voting Republicans into office. They don't seem very well aware that the Republicans tend to oppose raising the minimum wage (and tend to want to lower it), a lack of knowledge for which Cenk blames failed Democratic messaging.

He says that Trump won in 2016 because he was able to take advantage of 5 billion dollars of free media coverage, which Hillary did not have, despite her raising twice the amount of money Trump did.

I think Cenk makes some really good points on this video, about how the Democrats need to get our messaging out. Things like Medicare For All poll at 70%, so a savvy party should really be able to capitalize on that. But we didn't, and we lost ground in the Senate. Cenk thinks if the messaging was better, it would have been a blue tsunami and we would have swept both the House and the Senate.

Hate stuff like this. Ranked voting would solve this problem. In the most extreme case you could have 66% of the voters not want what the 34% want but the 34% get their way because of the 66% being split.

It's also why the Republicans and Trump had to join forces, or they'd have just handed the White House to Clinton on a silver platter.

Sidenote, her surname is Green. Mildly amusing.