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Elephants and Jackasses...

Discussion in 'Permanent Threads' started by Nettdata, Oct 14, 2016.

  1. Trakiel

    Trakiel
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    Call me Caitlyn. Got any cake?

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    I'm not completely opposed to all of this, but I do have my concerns. As a registered Democrat, I want the people determining who my party's candidate will be to be other Democrats. I'm wary of independents trying to hijack my party's platform or resources and I sure as hell don't want Republicans to have any say in influencing the candidate or platform.
     
  2. D26

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    If you're wondering, yes this happens. My die-hard Republican father in law and brother in law both vote in democratic primaries (Indiana is pretty much open primaries). They always vote for the candidate that could win the nomination but they think has no chance in November.

    Both voted for Bernie this year, and bragged about being Bernie Bros for a few days. When I asked, their response is along the lines of "if they're dumb enough to allow it, we'll do it." And "nothing stops democrats from doing the same, we just assume they do."
     
  3. Rush-O-Matic

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    What about the McMullin-Finn ticket winning Utah and mucking up the electoral votes? Then the House of Representatives selects the President from the 3 candidates with the most electoral votes, and names the Vice President from the 2 VP candidates with the most.

    So, that would be some crazy shit. If they decided to name McMullin as President, they couldn't choose Finn as VP, and would have to choose from Pence and Kaine, right?
     
  4. Kampf Trinker

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    I would probably see it that way if there were more parties. With only two it feels like the primaries select polarizing candidates(especially on the republican side), and extra rules have more to do with maintaining establishment power than allowing the public to choose wisely.

    I doubt many republicans would vote democrat rather than just for the republican candidate they want. The choice D26's father in law made is weird considering how Bernie was polling against the republican field at the time. Of course, you could argue that people were drawn to him for being a great debater and his authenticity, but would have shrank away from his actual policies in the general election. I think he would have kicked Trump's ass, but it's all just a guess.

    Last I saw, pollsters were putting the odds of this happening between 1-3%. Crazy that's it's even possible though.
     
  5. Rush-O-Matic

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    I don't think it's likely, just fascinating, both the choosing of the president (wouldn't the House choose McMullin over Trump?) AND the VP not being the choice's running mate. Although, I didn't think hanging chads and a supreme court decision were likely when Bush Jr was elected, either.
     
  6. Revengeofthenerds

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    Sounds like Arizona is in play now as well as georgia. Alaska and Texas possibly. I'd love to see palin lose her shit over Alaska turning blue. And the big cities in Texas are already blue so I wouldn't be surprised by that at all.
     
  7. D26

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    I'll be honest, if Hillary wins Texas, there is no way Trump doesn't scream "rigged!" From the mountain tops. That seems so unthinkable to me.

    Shit, they say Indiana is "close," but I say this without hyperbole: I have not seen a single Hillary sign. I see a Trump sign on every block (though to be fair, in 2012 I saw Romney signs on virtually every other house, so even that is down comparatively), but not a single Hillary sign. Even in 2012 I'd see one Obama sign for every 3 Romney signs, but literally zero for Hillary this year. Shit, I'll see yards with literally every democratic nominee EXCEPT Hillary.

    Point Is this: if you just lived in this town and didn't get outside News, it would be unfathomable that Hillary could win this state, let alone Gregg (Dem Governor nominee) or Evan Bayh (Democratic senator nominee). Gregg seems to be the most popular of the 3, but even that is a lot of backlash against Pence. I can't even imagine the cognitive dissonance of people who have "fire Pence" signs next to their "Trump/Pence" signs (and I've seen this at least 3 times in the past week).

    I think Trump wins Indiana by at least 5% (my state loves us some regressive racists, and I say that from personal experience), but Bayh and Gregg may both pull it out because of the "Vote for Trump but fuck the rest of the republicans" sentiment I see frequently, either cause they supported Trump (I.e. Normally votes Republican but hates Trump so is rebelling against all Republicans) or dropped their support for Trump (will vote for Trump and straight democrat after that out of spite). This is a fucked up year to be running down ticket.

    When I voted early, there were four people in the room. Myself, the two poll workers, and a dude in boots and a cowboy hat ranting about that "dumb bitch" Hillary and how she should be in jail. I didn't even hesitate to hit the straight democrat button. I also went back to check it entered the right results cause I don't trust Indiana for a moment.
     
  8. Kampf Trinker

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    Alaska and Texas are not going to turn blue. Georgia was in play for Obama as well, but will probably go red. It drifts towards the middle every time a democrat has a substantial advantage.

    Arizona illustrates a real problem for republicans, as well as New Mexico which has already flipped. Latinos vote so heavily on the immigration issue, kind of like blacks on 'black rights', which I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I guess this election the focus is on the cops. A lot of the republicans have moved towards amnesty win some of those votes.

    Trump might have moved the polls if he said something like "We're going to build the wall and secure our borders. Then we're going to grant amnesty for those already here and work towards a path to citizenship."

    Obama has deported millions of illegals, but he wasn't stupid enough to highlight that in his 2nd election. Trump talking it up does nothing but push swing voters away. He already has the base.
     
  9. Hoosiermess

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    Indiana went voted democrat in '08 so it's not out of the realm of possibility that could happen again. All of the bigger cities are dark blue and rural areas just don't have the numbers anymore to really call us a guaranteed red state. This year I won't be surprised either way, what we have here is a train wreck. There is opportunity though. If enough people would vote for who they want in the down ticket races and if they can't stomach either candidate vote third party or write in (whatever) for president we could get a message to the major parties that they need to get their shit together and promote better candidates. Won't happen but it would be nice.
     
  10. D26

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    My only issue with this is saying the cities are deep blue. Indianapolis and Gary/Hammond in northwest Indiana are deep blue. Maybe even Bloomington. Fort Wayne? Lafayette? South Bend? All fairly red.

    I agree it isn't out of the realm of possibility for Hillary to take Indiana, I was more saying based on living here and seeing and hearing those in my town, you only hear and see the pro-Trump crowd and you don't see or hear a single pro-Hillary person. It is because every pro-Hillary person I know in this town is literally afraid of what the Trump folks will do if they hear someone supports her. They're not a reasonable bunch when it comes to "those people" in this tiny 99% white town.
     
  11. Trakiel

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    Call me Caitlyn. Got any cake?

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    I was wondering about Indiana because of how much every Hoosier who talks about politics makes it crystal clear everyone despises Pence. Is that enough to make the state viable for Clinton?
     
  12. Kampf Trinker

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    Interestingly, Hillary is still focusing on securing the win, but Obama is touring along with his wife and Biden to push the democrats back in control of congress. Right now it is looking like they will lose the senate. That would mean even if the republicans held the house it will often be hard to fully stop the dems without shutting down the government, which will just make them look like obstructionist jackasses if they do it more than once. If they lose the senate, they will certainly lose at least some seats in the house, meaning the dems don't need to reach too far across the aisle anyway.

    Trump has moved up a little from the debate (not surprising as I think he did win on substance) but we won't get a clear picture of how it affected the polls until Monday. My guess is he loses whatever minor momentum he gained as the media keeps blaring the "nasty woman" comment and playing up the absurd Putin's puppet angle, then Hillary can focus on her electoral sweep.
     
  13. D26

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    Make no mistake, Pence is despised. That said, I still see people who hate Pence but will vote for Trump in spite of Pence. They're just happy to have him out of our state.

    So... maybe Clinton can win it? Like I said, no one is outwardly for Hillary around here. Shit, I talked to one of my female friends who said she was voting for Hillary and not telling her husband because he was so pro-Trump it would cause too big of a fight. She said she was worried he may actually leave her for not voting for Trump, so she'll just tell him she voted for Trump and she'll actually vote for Hillary. She also said she'd vote Republican on the rest of the ticket.

    The general rhetoric towards Hillary usually involves no small amount of vitriol. Hillary for Prison bumper stickers are the lightest she'll get. Fuck, at my 4 year old's soccer game two guys were saying (loud enough for me and everyone else to hear) that "that cunt should just die." Its Indiana, sadly that kind of thing has become normal here. As much as in other states people may be embarrassed to be Trump fans, in Indiana it is embarrassing to be a Hillary supporter, so I truly don't know what kind of support she is getting in this state.

    That said, I think Gregg, the democratic nominee for Governor, will win based on a massive Pence backlash, and the Republican is Eric Holcomb, Pence's Lt. Governor and is basically Pence Jr. Gregg leads by at least 5 points in most recent polls. Evan Bayh also leads by about 4 points in said polls, but again, I can see a lot of people who will vote Trump for President and Democrat everywhere else out of spite to the Republican Party and vice versa (Clinton for President, Republican the rest of the way).
     
  14. Hoosiermess

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    It's not just Indiana, if you get out of the cities in a lot of the states, I'm including upstate NY, PA, and as far south as Alabama not just the Midwest, those kind of comments are pretty common. I'm fortunate to travel a lot for work and many of the people I meet are very conservative and don't mince words when it comes to politics. Full disclosure, most of these people are from rural areas, some went to college, almost all are involved with agriculture so it is not a representative sample but probably about as representative as what you see locally. All of that said, I think you're probably right about Trump winning Indiana but if he does I think Holcomb probably wins Governor. I don't think the Pence hate is quite as bad as you think outside of school's and those left of center "liberals", then again I don't follow as close as others so I could be wrong. As big a deal as that may be I think more people are upset about the inefficient use of our tax dollars and many will vote based on that alone rather than some of the social issues that aren't as important to them.
     
  15. D26

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    That is true, but I don't live in a very conservative area at all, and I see a lot of Gregg signs.

    The biggest push I've seen is from educators. Granted, I notice it more as a former educator, but I can promise you the vast majority of people involved in education, along with their families, in Indiana won't vote for Holcomb. They way Pence stripped State Superintendent (and democrat) Glenda Ritz of pretty much all her power really pissed off a LOT of educators. The school I worked at is as conservative as it got, and even the most insane Trumper teachers I knew still said they were voting Gregg and Ritz because of how Pence (and for that matter, Daniels) has fucked over the education system in Indiana. Massive teacher shortage, unions basically non-existent, pay raises are merit-based (so based on ISTEP tests) don't exist in most school systems, beyond a small "cost of living" increase every four or so years, and a monstrous push to for-profit charters that produce iffy-at-best results. Charters were a running joke. When I worked at a more "urban" school in Northwest Indiana, we used to have what we called 'Charter transfer week." That was where we'd get at least two or three students, sometimes more, right before testing was supposed to begin. This was because Charters would expel them right before testing time if it looked like they may not pass. They'd be forced to go back to a public school and their negative test scores wouldn't affect the Charter school. The Charters could easily do this because they're not beholden to all the same rules a public school is, they're more like private schools. It usually wasn't hard to find a reason.

    The results for schools is that they are forced to teach to the test because that is such a major factor in how schools are 'graded.' The rural school I worked at, for example, had the standard ISTEPs and ECAs (End of Course Assessments). A student must pass their ECA to graduate (which, for the record, I was totally on board with), and ECA pass rate is a huge factor in how a school is graded (not as on board with this). When a student fails, they are forced by the school to take an "elective" called "ECA remediation." This means they have to give up a real elective to take a second math or English class.

    Now, this was a largely rural, successful school that sent a decent number of kids to college (although at last count only 15% of those students graduated from college), BUT it also had a large number of students who had zero intention of going to college. They took a lot of tech and trade based courses, and planned to go right into apprenticeship once they left (if not working on mom and dad's farm). We offered Welding, Construction (the students actually built a house during the semester), automotive care, and other trade-type classes. This was, honestly, the best thing about the school I worked at. Kids who hated school and regular classes often excelled in their trade classes, and it gave them a sense of purpose and direction and a feeling of success they weren't getting in, say, History. This made them actually behave much better and work a bit harder in my class because they knew they had to pass my class to graduate, so they could get their diploma and get a recommendation from their trades teachers for apprenticeships or trade schools. I truly believe these trade courses are why that school was so successful compared to the more urban schools I worked at where classes like that were not ever offered.

    Problem was, students with no intention of going to college were forced to drop their trade classes to take a course in how to pass an ECA. They were told to stop taking classes that could teach them skills that would help them make a living for the rest of their lives so that they could take a course that would help them pass a 1 time test and teaching them skills they'd never use again after they graduated. The course was quite literally "this is what is on the test" and "this is how you take this test." Imagine taking an entire course designed to teach you how to pass a single test. Imagine teaching that course (teachers fucking despised teaching that class). Students who would rather be in Welding or Construction but were forced to be there were, naturally, furious and made to feel stupid, so they'd skip class, get in trouble, and became much more likely to drop out. Teachers would try to convince the school to put those kids in some kind of before/after school remediation to help them prep for the test, but them passing the test became such a huge point of emphasis that they stuck with the classes.

    Ritz ran on a platform of reducing testing and improving standards, but as soon as she won, Pence and the Republican congress stripped her of almost every power she would've had as state superintendent and made her a glorified state school board member. The push back against that has been significant.

    In addition, a lot of the conservative friends I know hate Pence for the negative attention the RFRA brought Indiana. Economic Conservatives see the way the wind is blowing on LGBT rights (even if they don't agree with the "idea" of LGBT rights) and they'd rather keep our state up economically than alienate huge portions of the nation and cost our state millions (its estimated RFRA cost Indianapolis alone almost $60 million in lost conventions and tourism) over a social issue. They think Pence put his own personal religious beliefs ahead of the state's economy, and that infuriated a lot of fiscal conservatives.

    Again, I've usually voted Republican at the state level because I think small government and less taxes work better on a state level. It attracts businesses to the state and keeps jobs here. Still, Indiana under Pence stopped being economic focused and started being more focused on Social Issues, and fiscal conservatives felt alienated by Pence for it. The RFRA just highlighted that major separation between social and fiscal conservatives. Social conservatives loved Pence for the RFRA (and hated him for scaling it back once it was signed, they saw it as bowing to SJW pressures and felt it made him look weak), Fiscal Conservatives hated Pence for the RFRA, and the scaling back of it did nothing to make them feel better. Ultimately, if Gregg wins, it is because of education and Pence's massive fuck up with the RFRA.
     
  16. Kampf Trinker

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    Trump just has no reverse.



    I have no idea what the fuck he is hoping to accomplish. There is a time and place for everything, and the further he gets into his campaign the clearer he makes it that he'll never understand that. He treats a charity dinner the same as if he's barking at a group of redneck supporters. I have a feeling that his advisers have been trying to talk him out of his never-ending string of faux pas, but he think he's smarter than everyone else and that any slander is appropriate anywhere as long as you believe it to be true.

    He's lucky the media didn't expend much energy covering this event. It starts to get really ugly at 8 minutes in.
     
  17. toddamus

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    What gets me this was a catholic charity event, thats it. It wasn't a forum to take cheap shots, it was time for him to sit down shut up and be quiet for a bit and let everyone else enjoy themselves.
     
  18. ODEN

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    Everyone has their issues that they feel strongest about during election season. Mine is change and corruption. Trump just sold me on his candidacy, whether he accomplishes half of this or not, at least it's an attempt to make things better.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nda-aides-say-Hillary-just-waiting-clock.html

    In my opinion, term limits and restrictions on lobbying will make huge changes we desperately need.
     
  19. Kampf Trinker

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    He has a much stronger platform that he's been given credit for. I have doubts about him tackling wall street reform, but international trade, the points in Oden's post, superior foreign policy, (Clinton has experience here, but her experience is a mess and her current platform on this issue is fucking awful, not to mention conflicts on interest) a much needed response to China's ever ambitious attempts to weaken the US, and more sensible handling of government spending is what made me choose him.

    The things that bother me most about Trump are:

    - defunding planned parenthood (although he is supporting 6 weeks paid maternity leave)
    - his climate change policy is bad, bad, bad
    - Trump going orangutan mode and either over-responding to a real issue, or slinging feces at an unwarranted target

    I got invited to a Trump rally this Monday and I think I'm going to attend. It's not that I'm such a strong Trump supporter I feel a need to be a part of it, or anything like that, but I've never got to see a president or anyone this close to a presidency up close at a speaking event. I'd probably go if it was Hillary as well. Besides, whatever Trump may be I doubt that he'll let it get boring. I'll be honest if it's filled with deplorables, but I kindly doubt it.
     
  20. Revengeofthenerds

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    Meanwhile, Clinton's was better than any SNL political skit I've seen.