They both happened. DVaut made a point about liberals clustering in cities is bad for us. Not every legislature is as bad as NC.

Specifically, language that Trump has used in the past and now is used by the NRA (academic elites are the greatest threat) echoes what past dictatorships have done after taking power: imprison, kill, and exile as many academics, teachers, journalists, and intellectuals as possible.


https://twitter.com/JenAshleyWright/...30207366254592


https://twitter.com/JenAshleyWright/...30693402243073

ye and this is the sort of thinking that drives people crazy in politics. why arent they voting for us when we are "objectively" better for them? typically you will see it on the left when talking about unions, we support unions therefore the working class whites shall vote for us. and (probably?) you see it on the right when they cut taxes and ask themselves why arent warren buffet voting for us.

for those of us interrested in the real world it doesnt work like that. conservatives know just as well as liberals what they want and who will give it to them. they are not duped, they are not dumb. there are even studies i have shown here that shows that conservatives and liberals are more happy in times when the overlying political environment is according to the side they are on. politics is a little bit complex.

You're getting bogged down in details. While encouraging someone to withdraw is probably the best way, the Senate has many ways to say "no". Remember the filibuster has been around in the Senate for 150 years. A No is a No no matter how it is delivered.

Yes. We can and should debate the value of majority-minority districts. I agree that Democrats sort of acceded to it not only because of court orders but because I think Democrats and the left genuinely did and do want to see a critical mass of non-white legislators. Democrats used to have a lot of southern Congressmen, it's true. They were also uniformly white. Majority-minority districts were meant to solve some of that, even though the solution ultimately genuflected to Republican interests. Ultimately Newt Gingrich and a cadre of GOP big-thinkers realized that they could leverage the left's sincere desire to see more black legislators coupled with the ultimate systemic 'problem' (single-seat, winner-take-all elections) and abuse Democratic electoral fortunes with it.

But it's a tough nut to crack. Assuming a more non-partisan map, for Democrats to win in some of these districts that would be created, they would need almost surely need to recruit 'whiter' candidates on the whole and probably return back to a party that is far less socially progressive. Or assume that these systemic changes alone would flip alot of reflexive white voters into being Democrats. That doesn't feel logical to assume that would happen.

Because gerrymandering alone isn't actually the only problem and I'm pretty confident (too lazy to link) that the effects are dwarfed largely by the fact that Democratic voters, black AND white, are largely concentrated in some very small geographic areas. So long as we have winner-take-all districts that are geographically proportioned (much more systemically ingrained than gerrymandering norms and scams), Democrats have a problem on their hands. The change Democrats really need is a far more proportional awarding of Congressional and local state legislature districts that is *geographically agnostic,* but that's far more deeply embedded in the system and the laws.

WITHOUT that, getting back to parity probably means a party that is 'whiter' or assumes more race-blind voters out in America's suburbs and exurbs and rural areas than probably truly exist. That is to say: Democrats would have to recruit a bunch of white guys (and maybe white women) to run in some hypothetical non-partisan map or else we might just wind up in the same place anyway sans gerrymandering, because the kinds of districts that would be created are still going to having metric ****tons of aggressively racially anxious/racist white people.

I'm already a little ranty but the whole "fix gerrymandering and everything else sorts itself out" reminders me of the left/Democrats who simply want to dump more money into public education without fixing problems with integration, zoning, income distribution, how money gets controlled and outlaid at the local level. In the same way more money to schools might simply make more segregated and disparate schools, so to might electoral reforms. Glib, obviously, but fixing gerrymandering without changing anything else might simply make a more racist, less representative Democratic Party. That sounds absurd but see the Democratic Party before 1965 or even 1995.

The worst part of that is of course it prevents any kind of judicial relief for the nonsense the GOP pulls. This travel ban is a perfect example -- it's clearly just a load of nonsense, but now that Trump has his judge on the Court suddenly it's back on and will be argued in the fall. I'll lay 10-1 right now that Gorsuch and Thomas go all in on it too.

For me the scariest moment of the past six months was when the judges issued the injunction against the travel ban, because I thought there was a better than even money possibility that Trump would just ignore it and direct DHS to do the same. Which could have literally led to a civil war. But now with the SCOTUS in his pocket he doesn't even need to bother with that. Fascism can take a hold in a 100% legal manner.

That may also be why John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy are the two most important people in America right now.

And Kennedy wants to retire.

The self-packing of Democrats into major cities is something done by the choice of rank and file Democrats using their feet.

The Democrats were the ones who insisted on the creation of majority-minority districts using the court system.

Don't blame the GOP for those two.

Easily?

What if...and I mean If...what if there is absolutely nothing Dems can do to win because they get cheated more than they can make up for even with perfect campaigns?

Would that make you happy or sad?

Here's the real issue tho. Garland was qualified. A withdraw is for when you realize a rejection is likely. You can act like the GOP didn't change the norm that existed and you can ignore why they did it, since you don't ever seem to let reason bog you down.

Yeah because people were burning crosses on their lawns when they lived in the country.

Democracy should be based on population, not on region. One person, one vote.

Damn, I was expecting a post explaining that Wikipedia is unreliable because anyone can edit it, followed by a more reliable set of Breitbart links.

Not trying to poison the well or anything, but I've seen this movie play on loop so many times before.

I think the Democrats got the jump on Republicans in 2006 and 2008 by using social media effectively first. The GOP recovered by taking their deficiencies seriously and improving their electoral efforts.

The Democrats are in a similar position today. Put on your thinking-caps and fix your deficiencies.

look guys, a little cheating is nothing to fuss about. you can easily overcome it. qwit ur bellyaching

Some of you are good at this stuff, right? Go to work!

Sure but you still fail to account for Voter ID laws as well as voter roll purges. With all these factors set up against the Democrats and almost nothing working in their favor, it's hard to see how they can win elections going forward.

Also, there is the fact that winning every election in the world won't get the illegitimate Gorsuch out of office. There is no electoral remedy. They've broken our system completely.

Winning every election in the world also wouldn't go back and undo the stolen election of 2016. There's no way to right that wrong electorally. If we choose to fix the system that they've destroyed instead of starting fresh, we are putting ourselves at a tremendous disadvantage for absolutely no reason. This is not a legitimate government, and we shouldn't be treating it like one.

But wait, there's more! In addition to all the other electoral scams we've already mentioned, Republicans are currently using Congressional investigatory power for purely partisan purposes. They did the same thing when Obama was President to try to discredit Hillary using the bogus Benghazi investigation. Now they are using Congress to cover up Trump's high crimes and refusing to impeach him after he has clearly broken the law in many ways, including Obstruction of Justice.

You're never going to win playing by the rules when your opponent is making up the rules as you go along.

Einbert, apparently this is the best guide on how to stage a coup. I've a copy but not got round to it yet, so not sure how good it actually is.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.p...ontent=reviews

55.2% current majority in the House
58.8% majority right before 2010 loss of House by Democrats
53.0% majority right before 2006 loss of House by Republcans
59.2% majority right before 1994 loss of House by Democrats

That looks easy enough to me. if you have a solid message and campaign.

will the adults in the room please do SOMETHING

For months, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have privately counseled their more militant members to forswear talk of impeaching President Trump, telling them the political support for such a step simply doesn’t exist in the GOP-controlled Congress.

But 24 House Democrats, including the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, are now pushing an equally radical alternative: They are backing a bill that would create a congressional “oversight” commission that could declare the president incapacitated, leading to his removal from office under the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

At 12:56 p.m. Thursday, barely four hours after Trump tweeted attacks against MSNBC cable host Mika Brzezinski in crude, personal terms, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the chief sponsor of the bill, sent out an email to his colleagues, urging them to get behind the measure, writing it was of “enduring importance to the security of our nation.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-crea...124521145.html

these are amazing times we live in holy cow

Democratic leadership is still chasing fantasies of justice and impeachment.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bill-crea...124521145.html

This... doesn't seem like it accurately describes what has happened?

God Pelosi is so awful

Running count of elected Republicans willing to do ANYTHING remains at zero.

At this point why bother giving Trump any more attention. Focus on all his enablers.

Neil Gorsuch, a shrewd choice for a stolen Supreme Court seat
http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/2...tion/97332726/

Right but the question was "what are you suggesting?" which I don't believe you answered.

Lol that would be a crazy shaped country.

Holy **** that ad.

Lol.

I think you are ascribing way more logical reasoning to Trump than is appropriate, although if Bannon plots this and manipulates Trump into doing it I guess the result is the same.

If economic disaster reaches them, they will turn (maybe not the core alt-right base, but you have to be getting down toward 15% or lower at the point).