True. But getting them out to vote Democrat will still be a challenge.
No, it’s not, because the Dems are the ones who are angry about it. That’s always a good GOTV motivator.
I think it’s the attempts to criminalize abortion that will backfire on the GOP. “After6 weeks”. Jesus, many women don’t even realize they’re preggers at 6 weeks. I’d love to be a (D) running against an opponent who had to support that.
In my case, an impossibility.
In North Dakota? Heidi Heitkamp avoided the issue as much as possible, and while she is pro-choice, she favors late term abortion bans and opposes public funding for abortion.
She noticeably has avoided commenting on the North Dakota law that got struck down.
I was thinking more generally of races which might be close enough that candidate’s positions might make a difference, rather than any particular state, but Texas ®s (for example) are making similar attempts, and it might tip a few races there.
So, will you stay home or vote third-party?
Based on the poor spelling and grammar on display, not soon enough.
Third party. Greens. I like the party you recommend, but they have very little infrastructure that I can see.
Well, the Greens are one of the “Big Three” third parties in American politics, together with Libertarian and Constitution parties. (The others hardly ever appear on the ballot.)
Reviving this thread because of the shutdown. How’s that going to play out in November 2014? The GOP will have a lot of solid-red safe seats where it won’t matter at all – but also a lot of newly-gerrymandered ones, Pub-majority but not so solidly Pub, and possibly in play.
I hope it will mean a Gotterdammerung for the Republicans, with any seat that is at all in play being lost. But it is far too soon to say. The Young Turks were pointing out the other day that when the Republicans lie (as usual) and say that the Democrats just won’t negotiate with them, the Democrats have stupidly responded with, “The hell we won’t! We have already negotiated and given you almost everything you have asked for. The current budget is smaller than the the budget Paul Ryan wanted in 2011! We’ve made massive cuts in all sorts of programs!”
Leaving progressives to say through gritted teeth. “Why yes you did. Well done. Well done indeed!”
Maybe this should go in a new thread, but there’s something that doesn’t add up about gerrymandering, to me. Suppose a state has 10 congressional districts (each with a roughly equal population); five of them go 60-40 Democrat, and five go 60-40 Republican. Each party gets the same number of votes statewide, and each gets five districts. Now, the Republicans could redraw the districts in order to win more than half the districts, but it seems to me they could only do that by accepting a smaller margin of victory. They might win seven districts 55-45, and lose three by huge margins (80-20, or whatever); still an equal number of voters for each party.
So why do I keep hearing about how gerrymandering guarantees so many safe Republican districts? Seems to me that the only way to get more districts is to make each one a little less safe.
Your logic is correct. You create more rock solid Democrat seats, at the expense of making many safe Republican districts a little more competitive, but hopefully still winnable.
There are two different kinds of gerrymandering, that done by the party, and that done by the individual politicians. The party wants more seats for themselves, while the individual wants his or her own personal seat to be more secure. These can work at cross purposes, at times.
I saw a piece that claimed that the House was winnable by the Dems at the next election. I can’t remember the source but it was left-of-center so I assumed a certain level of excessive optimism in it.
Several sources, even Politico were pointing to recent polls that are saying that:
I should point out that this question, at least applied to the current political situation, assumes that this country and/or its governmental system will survive a default in its current form. Lotsa liberals/progressives out there who aren’t so sanguine…
It may not be a serious or catastrophic thing, so long as everybody takes a “muddle through” sort of attitude and stays calm. But when you are herding lemmings, its never a good idea to get too close to the cliff.
It also must be noted that candidates almost always do worse against a “generic” candidate than they do against any real specific person. The generic candidate has no baggage and no warts and can be fantasized to be anything.
I wouldn’t take this too seriously.