Isn't the MD gerrymandered for racial/historical reasons but not for partisan reasons? The partisan advantage is very low if I remember correctly. The 5 or 6 states with the highest partisan gerrymandering are all Republican.

NYT Opinion: Exit polls were wrong, and now we've made wrong conclusions about the 2016 election

CNN's exit polls (using theirs because NYT's doesn't show what % of each group is represented in the voting population) say that 32% of voters were college grads and 18% had grad degrees. This guy at Stanford says "uh, no":

The overestimating of college grads in the electorate (who mostly voted Hillary) has led us to weight college grads too heavily; a more accurate weighting of the voting population would show that a much higher share than we thought of Democrats' votes come from non-college-educated people:

However, this guy takes these data points to some...not good conclusions:

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Quisling mother****ers. There's a reason Trump is going HAM against the Washington Post and not the NYT.

There's an element of the former, but there was definitely partisan intent. MD Democrats gerrymandered a solid R seat into a D one in 2012. They also gerrymandered out some moderate Rs in 2002.

The DCCC is swooping into local races and trying to astroturf candidates who previously lost races so that they can get fundraising and stories in the national press even when the local party apparatus have already gotten behind another candidate

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/12/...-york-primary/

Gotta give it up to Ryan Grim for sticking with this story. He's doing great work. This one is so shocking that even with the terrible shivving of Laura Moser in Texas, my reaction to the story is "they can't possibly be that awful, can they?" Like maybe they did some oppo on Balter and found some dirt that they're afraid the Republicans will find use against her in the general. That's the best theory I can come up with that isn't the DCCC actively trying to sabotage their own grassroots.

How about the Corker-Kaine AUMF for bipartisanship?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...ot-curb-trumps

Congress is so upset about the executive abuse of the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs that they are going to go ahead and just authorize all the overreach.

(Quoting Kaine) “This is personal to me as the father of a Marine and someone who represents a state so closely connected to the military,” he said. “Congress has painstakingly avoided this debate for years because war votes aren’t easy. But if we’re going to ask our troops to risk their lives in support of a mission, then we need to at least have the courage to show we are behind them.”

If the POTUS is going to violate law to make war then we need to have the courage to legalize it.

The DCCC fears the rise of far left politicians as much as the rise of the far right because it means the big names in the DCCC's jobs are on the line. Remember that the current Democratic structure is based on Third Way philosophy of compromise and negotiation. The far left calls bull**** on that and doesn't believe in sipping tea with the enemy.

DCCC wants its people running not ours.

Jon Favreau of PSA is doing a short podcast series on how to fix the Democrats for upcoming elections and this conflict between the people and the party's desires should be the centerpiece imo.

Charactetizing the Third Way as embracing compromise and thus the "Far Left" as uncompromising is innacurate imo and grants the Third Way a propaganda victory. It's not about political strategy. They are just advocating for their genuine positions. They don't compromise with neocons on FP or compromise with fiscal conservatives on welfare reform, they agree with them on it. Or at least they generally and genuinely advocate for similar policy. Some individuals in either camp may be more or less open to horse trading, but that openness or lack of it isn't what separates the two camps.

You're right on about the jobs though. In both parties most would much rather rule the party in the minority than be pushed aside while another faction of their party takes over and is in the majority.

Third Way is acquiescence to one's enemy. That approach comes off as wishy-washy while Republicans, no matter how vile their positions they are, stick to their guns.

The Atlantic wrote a great article about how ignorant The Third Way is to how few people are really interested in their way of doing things.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...merica/543288/

Summary: Atlantic writer follows Third Way reps doing focus groups in Wisconsin, finds no compromise among people, ignores that in their actual report which is then fed to Democrats as their political strategy.

-----------------

This whole "work together" thing didn't work in 2016. Hillary ran on the Third Way (they go low we go high) and it didn't do ****. The Republicans viewed the Democrats as their sworn enemy just as their supporters did. It's time that the Democrats listen to their supporters and view Republicans the same way.

Never fear, local Democrats: the national party is here to save the day!

Fearing Chaos, National Democrats Plunge Into Midterm Primary Fights

The DCCC obsession with nominating veterans is really unsettling.

They are all rich kids so stupid that they can't even conceive that Republican veteran worship is anything other than a very sincere expression of love of country, so they imagine it's some brilliant 12D chess move to have a D veteran. That way he'll be IMMUNE from right wing agitprop about being soft on terror!

A (perhaps poor) analogy is the Republican insistence that they have some black friends/members/candidates. They CAN'T be racist, look at Ben Carson.

Not impressed with Tom Perez so far.

Kinda impressed with Tom Perez. Think the lawsuit is a good idea--takes relatively few resources, can uncover additional facts and information, and may even end up winning some portion of the case, just like the case filed 3 days after the Watergate breaking (and resolved the day Nixon resigned).

I assume it was filed at this time because the statute of limitations on one or more of their better claims was running and they had waited as long as they reasonably could.

Dems continue rigging primaries against progressive candidates, despite the fact that voters are eager for progressive platforms. Secret audio where it's candidly discussed with a progressive (Tillemann) running in Colorado.

Hoyer: I am for Crow because a decision was made very early on. I didn't participate in the decision.
Tillemann: So your position is, a decision was made very early on before voters had a say. That's fine because the DCCC knows better than the voters of the 6th Congressional District, and we should line up behind that candidate.
Hoyer: That's certainly a consequence of our decision.
...
Tillemann: I mean, it's undemocratic to have a small elite select someone and then try to rig the primary...
Hoyer: I hear you, and I disagree.
Tillemann: But you were part of that process.
Hoyer: Absolutely.

Parties are inherently awful and the two party rut we're in should be one of the choices in the destruction of humanity thread.

Where it's not feasible to win as an independent I want people to run as Democrats who not from a progressive wing or caucus of the party but are independents openly rejecting party leadership of any kind. Party nullification. Republicans should do it too. I'd say you might worry about what kind of independents it would unleash, but like Steve King or Donald Trump?

I have no doubt that this is happening but I'm also pretty suspicious of the intercepts reason for pushing this story so hard

The people at the Intercept are progressive, that's their motive. Like me, they're probably tired of seeing the Democratic Party pretend to be progressive and then pull this kind of stuff behind the scenes. They probably hope that shining a light on this stuff will cause people to take a stand, which we can't do if we're not informed about it to begin with. If nothing changes (be it the behavior of the Democratic Party, or the two-party system itself), both parties will perpetually drift to the right and we the voters will "lesser of two evils" ourselves off a cliff.

Republicans show up to vote no matter what and that has allowed the party to drift further right.

Democrats refuse to show up if their nominees aren’t sufficiently liberal and that has not helped the party drift further left.

I wonder which of these two strategies is the winning one long term?

Most of the people who didn't show up were neither Democrat nor Republican. I did show up, but I'm certainly not D or R.

yeahhh about that

lol. Still carrying water for Hillary and the DNC.

I’m carrying water for a fact-based reality. I wish more people would.