Shri should tank after I saw his nonreaction to Colbeck’s bigotry. (Sorry, didn’t save the link.) I understand what you’re saying, Bob, and mostly agree with you. But, Whitmer doesn’t look like a sure winner either, so my calculating desire to play it safe isn’t quite triggered. At this point, I’m leaning toward voting for Abdul, simply because he’s the only one who looks like he’s actually running for the damned job.
I can’t argue with your logic either. At times it seems Whitmer is channeling Hillary, being the anointed one that the party wants and running for the general without bothering to show up for the primary. Maybe the Bernie fans can come out in great numbers to get Abdul elected, I’m just afraid his candidacy will mobilize the bigots.
Whitmer looks like the next governor of Michigan to me.
You’ve just afflicted her with the electoral equivalent to the Sports Illustrated cover jinx.
This is the first time, maybe ever, that I may walk into the booth and not fully know who I’m casting my vote for.
I like Abdul. But I grew up in Dearborn where his religion, his beard, his Arabic name and his hijab-ed wife would be no big deal. Now I live in west Michigan, and when I tell people-- political moderates and even liberals-- where I’m from, the things they say make my skin crawl. Ridiculous, ignorant anti-Muslim and anti-Arabic bullshit. Now i know he’s got a lot of support in west Michigan-- hell, I went to see him speak at Hope College-- an evangelical school in Holland-- in early spring, before anyone was even paying attention to the campaign, and there were more than 150 people in the room to see him. He’s charismatic and I like his message. But I think about the political moderates I know here in Ottawa and Kent Counties, and I just have a hard time picturing them voting for Abdul over Schuette.
Then there’s Gretchen. Boring as fuck, and great observation upthread: It’s like she’s barely campaigning. Her social media presence has really only come to life in the past week or so. She seems to be letting her endorsements do the campaigning for her. Plus, my wife emailed her and Abdul’s campaigns a specific question about something that’s very important to us. Gretchen’s (or her campaign’s answer) was 100% the opposite of what we wanted to hear. Abdul’s answer was much more open to interpretation, and seemed like he could be persuaded to hear both sides of the issue. So, I don’t like her all that much, but I can totally see my Ottawa and Kent County moderate friends pulling the lever for her in November. And she would be better than Schuette.
Now I get it, a Democrat’s probably not gonna win Ottawa County any time soon, but I’m just thinking state-wide, can Abdul get those moderate white voters whose only exposure to Islam is what they see on TV to vote for him? Can his amazing charisma and message persuade people? I just don’t know.
So for the first time in six months, I’m actually leaning Gretchen. But I’m not happy about it, so who knows what I’m gonna do.
Winning is not the only metric. Beto is still unlikely to beat Cruz, among others, but the very fact that it is so much closer is big news. Even as we speak, Pubbies are looking over their shoulders, nervously thinking about some middle ground between sane people and Il Douche. Middle ground might as well be Middle Earth, they copped their power drugs from division and anger. They turn away from the Trump Orcs, they’re fucked. Stick with them, also fucked.
And their brilliantly planned gerrymandering project may be about to bite them in ass. It was a mathematically brilliant plan, build districts with a few overwhelmingly blue, and build the rest to give the Pubbies a small but reliable advantage in most others. Playing the odds, that overall, they had legislated a clear and ongoing majority. If you most often win by one or two percent, then you most often win.
I don’t really need to point out the vulnerability of that plan, do I?
You are correct, elucidator. Though you are likely to get snarky posts about “participation trophies”. Forcing the “other guys” to expend resources on what they thought were safe seats does create opportunities elsewhere. And while todays computer programs do allow for gerrymandered district margins of victory to be shaved ever closer to facilitate taking more seats, it does make them vulnerable to wave elections than ever before.
It would not matter to Cruz one bit.
I’m biking though the UP, lots of yard signs. One of the riders who is, or was, a state senator ( or maybe rep) is very fascinated by the Dem race (he is Republican)
Brian
I think it would. When was the last time a vulnerable Senator launched a successful presidential campaign? He can’t be spending all that time in Iowa or New Hampshire and be out of touch with Texas.
They are Assyrian, and they are members of the Eastern Rite of Catholicism which is in full communion with the Holy See, but they do share some liturgical traditions with the various Eastern Orthodox Christian denominations.
Just IMO, Orthodox Christians from Arab countries tend to be extremely conservative politically. I don’t know if this also applies to the Chaldeans.
Chaldeans may not consider themselves Arabs, but the people who hate Arabs do. That fact will matter now that an Arab hater is POTUS.
So apparently the Libertarian Party qualified for Major Party status in Michigan (with my help!) and are having a state-funded primary, but the two guys they’re running are wackjobs with views equally out of line with my way of thinking on important topics when compared to the real major party candidates. Why do they always want to abolish some major federal government department? And what does that have to do with running for Governor? Thus exemplifies my problem with the primary system: every candidate promotes themselves as a lunatic fringe candidate to grab their lunatic fringe that will be voting in their primary. That doesn’t make sense, especially in Michigan with open primaries. To win in the general, you’re going to need centrist support, and you can get that support even in the primary from centrist voters like me who don’t know what party to vote for in the primary. If these Libertarians hadn’t mentioned anything about national politics, they might have gotten my vote, but they can’t appeal to their base without making such remarks.
The article I’m reading about them notes that they both have run for Congress before. Gee, that’s some real experience there. If I were to want to run for public office and didn’t want to run as a major party candidate, I’d start from the bottom and build a large resume of political experience before going state-wide. No political experience (other than running for Congress) mentioned. Why do these guys do it? Are they having fun? Paying for nice dinners and hotels on donated money?
You were expecting non-whackjobs from the Libertarian Party? They both look like standard Libertarian candidates spouting the party line to me.
Good point. But even i get the obvious ones right most of the time. I look like a fool mainly because I try to call the ones that DON’T have an 80% chance of happening.
She leads in the primary by 20. She leads in the general by 15. This is not a brassy call on my part.
Because that’s what Libertarians do.
Some lefties are starting to get into that game too. Probably go just about as well as it has for conservatives. A government agency, once established, is near eternal.
Expecting? Of course. But I can hope, one day, they will attract candidates that simply are fiscally conservative and socially liberal but otherwise are in step with the majority of the population. It’s as if they don’t actually want to win the general election, but just play at being a politician.
Well, it’s possible that the agency might stop existing, but I definitely don’t understand why they think that simply abolishing the agency will reduce the scope of government. All the people who work for the agency will just become part of another department and do the same job. Abolish the IRS? All those people will just become part of some other wing of Treasury that may (or may not) already exist, and will continue to audit tax returns and put out regulations and rulings just like before.
Exactly. I do think you can abolish agencies if their role is something that you don’t think the government should do at all. I really don’t think there should be a Department of Energy or Education, and the few functions I think should exit(like managing nuclear weapons) should be under the military’s supervision, not Energy. I suspect it was put there so to make the agency harder to kill. SAme with student loans and the Department of Education.