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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:18 pm 
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arcosh wrote:
If i understand it correctly, the one election they lost was in a district so red, that the republican candidate usually wins by a 30% margin and this time he won by a 7% margin, so while they lost, they still had a good performance.


Yes. Don't forget, these were special elections for replacing congresspeople appointed to cabinet positions, and they were ruby red districts.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu Apr 20, 2017 11:52 pm 
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The Democrats have a frustrating history of close-but-not-quite. The first race, they didn't even try because Kansas. The second one, they had the most favourable conditions possible to win a red district for once. The most unpopular president in the history of polling, a load of campaign support and advertising dollars, and an opposition poorly coordinated enough to divide themselves among 4, count 'em, 4 candidates. Still nope.

They're Charlie Brown and the football.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 7:53 am 
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Only this time the football was perched on top of a tree, hanging out with the kites. Favorable circumstances can only make up for so much raw partisan advantage.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 8:07 am 
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They're not doing that badly. There have been more than a dozen special elections since Trump came in (most, granted, not for Congresscritters), and the Democrats have outperformed Hillary in all but one (a deep blue constituency where they still won by 2-1), for an average gain of a dozen points. That would tend to bode badly come 2018 for the Republicans. And it's worth remembering that in Ga the Republicans won't all get behind their candidate now; the tea party types didn't get what they wanted, and are more likely to stay home than show up for a special election where they have no irons in the fire. So we shall see.

Meanwhile, back in Trumpland, he's let it be known that he wants pure tax cuts with no offsets. Thus his co-conspirators on the Hill would all have to own blowing up the deficit, which they would not be happy about; and it would die in the Senate so they'd get the blame without anything to point to. Go ahead, count on all their votes.

He's also against a clean (wall free) budget bill or allowing AHCA to rest in peace, because he's accomplished nothing he can brag about to the chumps in the cheap seats (his few actual accomplishments all involve directly betraying them), and feels he needs something to brag about in his first hundred days. Notwithstanding he's lying that his first 90 days were the most successful ever, he's worried about the 100 day stories which might be reduced to discussing him betraying the chumps because he's failed at everything else. He poisoned your water, helped someone steal your 401k, and put your browser history up for sale isn't what wants to see, but right now it's all he's got.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 8:40 am 
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drachefly wrote:
Yes. Don't forget, these were special elections for replacing congresspeople appointed to cabinet positions, and they were ruby red districts.

Yay, gerrymandering?

Weremensh wrote:
He's also against a clean (wall free) budget bill or allowing AHCA to rest in peace, because he's accomplished nothing he can brag about to the chumps in the cheap seats (his few actual accomplishments all involve directly betraying them), and feels he needs something to brag about in his first hundred days.

He can brag about Gorsuch and ICE raids and how South Americans are too scared to sneak across the border anymore. He'll brag about bombing Syria and Afghanistan. When in doubt, use xenophobia. He'll also take credit for stock market performance. It's pretty thin but he'll milk it.

Weremensh wrote:
Meanwhile, back in Trumpland, he's let it be known that he wants pure tax cuts with no offsets. Thus his co-conspirators on the Hill would all have to own blowing up the deficit, which they would not be happy about;

Really? Since when? I figured most of them only cared about deficits when a Democrat's in charge. If it's a Republican, blow up the deficit, we're all for "starving the beast".

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 1:56 am 
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And the polls are in. 88% of Trump's voters believe he has accomplished a good amount. 94% of them approve of his job performance. 96% stand by their decision to vote for him. The football team effect is still going strong. People don't change what football team they support just because their team loses a lot. Being a supporter of X Team is their identity.

Ironically, the failure of the AHCA means that people aren't going to lose their health care, and therefore millions of people won't be angry at Trump.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:38 am 
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But at the same time even his hard core voters are now ten percent less likely to say he keeps his promises (he lost a lot more ground on all the other 'positive' traits); and his soft core supporters are only 74% in favor of him. When asked if they regret being chumps (which this poll basically did) they'll say no because they don't want to admit they were chumps. But behind that the glow is fading among the minority who voted for him on the grounds of anything but overt racism (which is pretty far ahead as the number 1 reason).

Granted he'll have a hard time losing the racists. That said, the US is on track to have a record number of brick and mortar stores closing this year (more people have lost retail jobs since January than there are jobs in coal), so it looks like we're heading into an economic downturn even without the gross economic mismanagement of the GOP. Since the hardcore racists tend to be the losers of the modern economy they'll be hit a lot harder than the anti-Trump crowd in any downturn, and that's not likely to endear him to them no matter how many evil postulates they agree on. The rest, who voted for him for profit, will simply bolt when they start to take losses. All of this is before we even get to natural disasters and wars. Things don't bode well for him.

Alas, weak little men like him flail around when they look weak to buttress the lie that they're not. That doesn't bode well for anyone else.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 1:53 pm 
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We'll have to see how much these people actually care about Trump keeping his promises. I've always gotten the sense that it was much more about posturing than promises. Obama didn't keep quite a few of his promises (shutting down Guantanamo Bay) and he did quite a few things that displeased left-wingers (drone wars) but this did not significantly depress Democrats' support for him. People go in with the expectation that politicians won't keep their promises. The bar comes pre-lowered.

If Trump keeps up this crapfest, some of the less enthusiastic Trump voters might stay home the next time, but the Democrats aren't doing a good job of winning over new supporters. Something like 67% of people think that they're out of touch.

As for the retail job losses - that's structural adjustment due to the internet taking over the retail stores' business, not a general economic downturn. The unemployment rate continued to fall in March, overall jobs creation exceeded expectations, and consumer confidence is high. Those laid-off retail workers will probably be able to find new service jobs pretty quickly. They'll probably just have to move into food service or cleaning or warehouse work or low-level health care jobs. Also, unlike coal, retail is geographically dispersed so disgruntlement will be spread too thinly to swing particular districts. Also because it's so dispersed, few politicians have any incentive to care about it.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 5:35 pm 
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On the other hand, more than 80 percent of the jobs created in the United States since December went to people who already had jobs. That doesn't say anything really hopeful for the folks in flyover country who lost their main streets to the malls and are now losing the malls. Fine, they can shop online. What will they be spending? They can lie to themselves that things have improved because their team is in charge, but their credit cards won't believe them.

Btw: where did you see that 2/3 of the folks think the Democrats are out of touch?

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 12:33 am 
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Here.
Quote:
Democrats should be cautious about getting too gleeful about Trump’s numbers though, as 67 percent say the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans, according to the Post/ABC survey. Both Trump and the Republican Party have better scores in that regard with 58 percent and 62 percent, respectively.


I halfway suspect that with a certain crowd, "out of touch" is yet again a dog whistle code for "cares too much about forcing creepy transgender people into our bathrooms".

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That doesn't say anything really hopeful for the folks in flyover country who lost their main streets to the malls and are now losing the malls. Fine, they can shop online. What will they be spending? They can lie to themselves that things have improved because their team is in charge, but their credit cards won't believe them.

Firstly, I think we'll see a lot more home healthcare and nursing home aides. Health care is the fastest growing sector of the economy. Secondly, there isn't any obvious ideological villain for the decline of meatspace retail; what are people gonna do, call for the internet to be shut down? With manufacturing and coal jobs politicians can jump up and down and scream "China! Mexico! NAFTA! EPA regulations!" It isn't true, but it makes a neat story. There isn't any clear narrative for bringing back retail jobs.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 7:51 am 
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You are assuming there should be some rational connection that withstands the slightest scrutiny.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 10:09 am 
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There is no rational reason for the whole country to be getting hung up on coal jobs either, it's all narrativium. There's probably insurance claims adjusters and postal clerks in Phoenix, Arizona who've never seen a mine in their lives who are are excited about Trump purporting to help the coal industry. Even in coal country there are an order of a magnitude more health care jobs than coal jobs, but nobody ever talks about those.

The decline of retail jobs has got no easy narrativium for Democrats to capitalize on. It'd be brilliant if they could come up with something, but I'm not seeing where it slots in with their platform.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Wed May 03, 2017 10:49 pm 
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The House Republicans claim that they have finally found the votes to pass their health care bill. They appear to have done so by making coverage even crappier to please the hard right, and then slapped a bandaid over it (a drop more funding for high-risk pools) to mollify the moderates. Said bill is still awful and will never pass the Senate in its current form. It will likely die there. Question: if the Senate Republicans managed to revise said bill to their satisfaction, would they then have to send it back down to the House to be re-approved? And if so, would the Freedom Caucus reject it all over again?

As for Comey's testimony to Congress about his role in the election, it appears he was trying to be principled to the point of stupidity. The Republicans rolled him. He, and frankly almost everyone else in the world, were operating under the assumption that Trump would assuredly lose the election and Clinton would be president. They were desperately trying to cover their arses against accusations that they were covering for a shady soon-to-be President Clinton, leaving them wide open to attack from Surprise Russian President Trump.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 12:50 am 
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If the Senate actually passes anything, it will have to go to a conference committee involving representatives of both houses (since there is no chance they'd pass the House bill as written). They'd have to hammer out a compromise version, and if they do it then has to be passed as written by both houses. If either one modifies it again, back it goes. Clearly there's nothing acceptable to the murderous reactionary wing of the House Republican caucus, the wing that can't get reelected without non-Republican votes, and the Senate Republicans (many of whom also need non-Republican votes) all at the same time; so this is pretty much just political suicide for the non-murderous reactionary House types who vote for it only to see it go nowhere.

Mind you, the phrase 'murderous' reactionary is carefully advised here. They want to set up a two tier system with this bill; in one tier is the healthier 80 percent of the population who will see reduced premiums, which is supposed to attract them to vote Republican. The other 20 percent will be allowed to die off; neither private insurance nor government coverage lasting 12 months per year will be available to them (8 billion dollar drop in the bucket notwithstanding). Of course the folks who need non-Republican voters see the problem with this; rather too many of that fifth of the population have relatives and friends among the other four-fifths. If the GOP lets someone's mother die, they may not be quite as impressed with the lower insurance premiums as all that come the next election.

Needless to say Trump is using his rather feeble negotiating powers to try to get that plan passed through the House. We should find out how well that works in a few hours.

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 Post subject: Re: Trump.
 Post Posted: Thu May 04, 2017 1:27 am 
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That's what I said they were gonna do several dozen pages back. There's a constituency out there who are youngish and in good health who used to have cheap insurance plans that they rarely used and who see Obamacare as an unnecessary tax. The Republicans are going to sell hard to those people and try to blame sick people for being sick. People aged 65 and over will still have Medicare, and most people still have employer-based insurance, but anyone who's young or merely middle aged who is self-employed or works for a small business and sick can go screw themselves. So it's not everyone's mother, but it's going to be an awful lot of brothers and sisters and cousins. The GOP is basically betting that their voters like low taxes more than their relatives. That's what they did pre-Obamacare. Anyone who couldn't afford health insurance back then was told that they should have gotten a real job and/or shouldn't have had children. Loss aversion will change this calculus though. People aren't motivated by potential gains as much as they are by fear of losing what they already have, so this is going to get ugly.

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