I don’t think that came out the way you intended - Bricker is the only one to whom the phrase “brave defender of the principles of democracy” applies, because you want felons to vote and one of your friends threatened suicide?
Regards,
Shodan
Well, fuck.
“The only one your admonitions apply to is yourself.”
A 9 to 13 seat edge isn’t exactly what I’d call a virtual tossup.
If 0 = 9 or 0 = 10 or 0 = 13 in your mind, that explains much about your posting here.
Democrats won 66 million votes in 2016. How do they need to change to become relevant to the mainstream? They aren’t a minority party, they just are limited to the coasts and the big cities. The dems do terrible with rural whites and high school educated whites.
Do you mean focusing more on economic issues and less on social issues?
By “basically a toss-up” I meant that the anticipated tipping-point seat is in the midst of the toss-up seats, rather than among the Lean D seats, for example. That’s true for RCP, Politico, Crystal Ball, and Cook Political Report (and 538 it seems). I don’t think that should be used to impugn the honesty of any of those prognosticators. Your mileage may (and apparently does) vary.
I think identity politics is a loser’s game. It’s alienating. Both R’s and D’s play the game, but I think the Democratic establishment as a whole openly embraces identity politics much more so than the Republican party does (the GOP establishment if anything is repulsed by the hijacking of their party by right-wing identity warriors).
The Dems need to stop putting people in boxes. They need to stop alienating people who don’t act or believe the way that identity politics says they are supposed to. People are not robots. We are individuals.
The interesting thing is that at the same time as this has been going on, the Democratic Party has become just as much of a slave to corporations as the Republicans ever were. I don’t think it used to be that way, but I don’t know, maybe it was. But, the Democrats can’t call themselves the party of the regular Joe without being hypocrites.
Well, let’s look at this one. They don’t say exactly what they mean by ‘lean’ or ‘likely’ so we’ll apply the 538 ranges: a leaner has a 60-75% chance of going the way it’s leaning, a ‘likely’ has a 75-95% chance of doing so, and a ‘solid’ has a 95-100% chance of doing so. For computation purposes, we’ll give the leaners a 67.5% chance, the likelies an 85% chance, and the solids a 99% chance because they’re probably more clustered towards the certainty end of the distribution.
Politico has 172-20-16-28-31-33-135 going from solid D to solid R respectively. We’ll count the D’s:
172 .99 = 170.28
20.85= 17
16*.675= 10.8
28*.5 = 14
31*.325 = 10.075
33*.15 = 4.95
135*.01 = 1.35
Sums to 228.455 D to 206.545 R.
Maybe that looks like a virtual tossup to you.
Nah, you just read them in the way that makes YOU happy. Just because a notion makes you happy, doesn’t mean it’s true.
ETA: FWIW, Cook came out to about the same place. I didn’t bother with Sabato; I heard his name more than often enough in two years at UVa.
538’s prediction that the Dems have an 86% chance of taking the House doesn’t make me “happy”, but I’m capable of reading that without concluding that Nate Silver is dishonest.
Democracy as a system does not imply any sort of specific moral or philosophical outcome.
Of course it does. Your mileage should too, because that’s a totally bogus definition of ‘virtual tossup.’
You’re just coming up with a definition that will keep you happy for the next eight days. Now consider eight days plus N hours. At what N will that cease to work for you?
Republicans: Hey, let’s fuck up some gay people!
Democrats: Maybe lets not?
Republicans: STOP PLAYING IDENTITY POLITICS!
Incidentally, you recently described me as “disordered.” Does that count as putting people in boxes? In what why do I need to show you “love” to get you to not slander me like that?
Well, nobody else is forecasting a virtual tossup by any reasonable definition. And the battle for the House is being fought on increasingly red territory as we get closer to Election Day, as the GOP takes money from seats that used to be tossups, and throws the money at seats that were regarded as solid just days ago.
So yes, if RCP is saying it’s a virtual tossup, they’re fooling themselves and their readers. Or maybe you’re the one who’s interpreting what’s on their site as a virtual tossup, in which case you’re the one who’s fooling yourself.
That will only hold up for eight days and N hours, for a fairly small integer N.
That hasn’t been my observation.
I did not describe you as being disordered. If that’s the way you took my statement, then you are putting yourself in a box. You are so much more than a sex act.
God what hateful bullshit. No different from calling being black, or Jewish, “disordered”, but saying “you’re so much more than a skin color/religion” in defense when someone calls you out.
Your religious beliefs do not give you a pass for spreading hate.
That is absurd. How can you equate a sex act with skin color? One is a human act, one is an immutable genetic characteristic.
A human act can be rightly ordered or disordered.
A genetic characteristic cannot be ordered at all. It simply is.
I am neither asking for a pass nor spreading hate.
If you’re calling a consensual adult activity that harms no one “disordered”, then you’re spreading hate, just as calling, say, following a Jewish custom “disordered” would be spreading hate.
“harms no one” is your opinion.
You have strange qualifications for what constitutes “hate”.
Can I make any moral claims that differ from yours without “spreading hate”?
No? When one city passed a local ordinance protecting some trans rights, why did Republicans feel it necessary to turn it into a national issue? When gay marriage was illegal in every state in the Union, why did Republicans push so hard for DOMA? When Democrats tried to make it possible for every American citizen to serve their country in the armed forces, why did Republicans fight so hard against it?
This has been how Republicans have treated gay people literally my whole life. I was three when they pushed the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gay people from being teachers. What did gay people ever do to deserve this treatment from Republicans? Why is it a bad thing that the Democrats, finally, tried to do something to help us?
Yes, you did. I’m gay. You said homosexuality is a disorder. Therefore, I’m disordered. That’s a box you put me into. I want to know why you’d do that. I’ve never hurt you. I’ve never expressed hate towards you, but you’re willingly to blithely say enormously insulting things about me, and about the people I love. I’m wondering what I did to deserve that? And in light of your comments here, I’m wondering why the onus is on me to convince you not to insult me like that? Why do I have to do the work to show you love to get you to stop treating me like I’m diseased? Why is that my responsibility, when all I want you to do is let me live my life in peace - which is exactly what I was letting you do, until you started slandering me in public? Why didn’t “treat other people the way I want to be treated,” fail, in your specific case?
What harm does me being gay do to you?
Insulting and slandering people is a fairly standard definition of “hate.”
Of course you can. But some “moral claims” are inherently hateful. “Blacks are inherently less moral than white people,” is both a moral claim, and a hateful claim.
So is “homosexuality is disordered.”