Mitch McConnell is gonna be so much worse after this, as if that wasn’t already possible. Now that they will have a clear and healthy majority in the Senate, there is basically nothing to stop anything now. Any bill passed by the House will never pass the senate. These next 2 years will be an endless train of judicial confirmations and grabbing onto whatever they can before 2020. Impeachment will probably be on the table but it never had a chance of passing through the senate anyway. And now that the GOP gained several senate seats, there will be no republicans that would even vote to remove him from office no matter what he did. As a republican in reliable red states, going full Trump might work for them.
They're STILL voting in Washoe county NV, so no state numbers yet. Polls closed at 7, but folks are still in line 2 hours later.
They're not going to open with impeachment, they're going to investigate, investigate, investigate. They're going to make the case for impeachment in public, over and over, without actually filing the paperwork. They're going to let the public clamor for it until either the Republican Senators start coming out to support it, or they can use it as a cudgel in 2020.
The Dems gain power in the JV branch of Congress and its all impeachment talk. I'd love to see if all of the new reps stick to their guns and vote for someone besides Pelosi to be the speaker of the House. Without some major findings by Mueller the impeachment shit is a dead issue as the Republicans have a majority in the Senate. As Bill Clinton proved being impeached without conviction by the Senate means jack shit!
And it's every bit as pointless and ridiculous as before they took the house.... Glad how the races shook out here. I wouldn't put Gillum in charge of a hot dog stand, let alone the governorship. This state just passed some unbelievably stupid shit on the ballot though. I have a feeling some of these redundant departments we just created like "The Florida Department of Counter-terrorism" are just going to be some podunk office with 2-3 employees.
They’re going to blow their load too soon or set some precedent that’s going to bite them in the ass later on. Democrats are always their own worst enemies. That being said, the Republicans deserved to lose the House 100%. They bitched about Obamacare for 6 years and as soon as they gained full power back they had absolutely nothing chambered to replace it. Not even something half-baked. Obamacare was a terrible policy and it should have been a slam dunk, ostensibly. What a bunch of morons. Other less reported things of note: -Mitt Romney is now a Senator. He went from the Governor of my state to a Senator of Utah. I like Romney, but I guess he had to play in Mormon land. -Beto O’Rourke lost to Ted Cruz, that’s not surprising. What is surprising is by what little margin Cruz won. I hope he doesn’t run again after this. -Claire McCaskill is gone. Good. -Given all the gun control talk, the only legislation of note that passed anywhere is raising the age to purchase from 18 to 21 in Washington. -Given the Republican gains in Ohio and Florida, Democrats should be worried for 2020. -114 million people voted in a midterm election. That’s a great thing.
What surprises me is why any human being on the face of this earth would vote for Cruz. Do they honestly hate dems down there so much they’d rather have a senator who is subhuman? Even Alabama refused to stoop that low with Roy Moore.
It’s because Houston is the only major city in this country of this size that still doesn’t lean heavily democratic. This is a state where the word “liberal” is said with such disgust, you would think it meant “puppy drowner” and not a political leaning.
Jacksonville doesn't lean democrat either. It's not quite as big as Houston, but it's not tiny either. I can understand voting for Cruz if you just want a conservative in the senate rather than a democrat. At the least I can understand that more than the people voting for Menendez. That fucking blows my mind. I don't get what the guy has to do for people to vote him out. How much of a piece of shit do you have to be to steal from people's health care funds? All I can think is that we've gotten to the point where a politician can get away with basically anything because they'll just tell their base it's a liberal/conservative conspiracy theory. People are dumb. And thank you Florida for not electing Gillum. I really think his God awful campaign is what cost Nelson his seat as well, which is too bad.
The whole thing is weird to me. It feels like since Obama was in office that GOP strategy was to obstruct and hinder and flame democrats for being democrats. They held endless investigations into Hillary for lots of things that ended up without the results they wanted. They filled their base with rage and took it to the polls. Now democrats took the house back and are talking about resuming investigations and pulling Trumps tax returns. And the gop is saying that the people don’t want this to happen and that spending the next 2 years trying to investigate and get rid of Trump won’t serve them well and will only turn their own supporters against them. Why does rage work for the GOP but not for the dems? Is there some kind of fundamental difference between the types of people?
Honestly the answer is right wing media. Republicans have a thirty year head start on just constant unyielding propaganda being pumped to their base all day every day. They're not just tuning in during elections, they're not listening to journalists trying their best, it's the equivalent of a 24/7 psy-ops campaign, and if you haven't been exposed to it it's hard to grasp how aggressive and thorough it is. The Republican strategy worked because their voters had been groomed for it to work.
Every republican I know personally is one of the angriest people I know; especially towards groups of people who have zero effect on their lives. My fiancé’s dad watches so much Fox News that there is a ghost imprint in the bottom corner of the tv from the logo. It’s literally all he watches. His anger is so poisonous that he doesn’t even like going to visit places that have liberals present. I know liberal people are pretty angry right now at the right in general for standing by quietly endorsing everything Trump does. Why would cleaning up the problem be worse for voters?
I miss the days not long ago when people kept their political opinions to themselves at all times. Hearing people say things like “I can’t be friends/speak to So-And-So because they dint believe what I believe”. One of the smartest things Bill Maher ever said was “I can be close friends with Ann Coulter because outside my show we never discuss politics”. It’s a simple discipline. My friends and I abide by it. Because once politics becomes the topic of discussion, even if you agree with each other it still gets ANGRY when you’re all in the same room. I’ve seen very, very close friends come to actual blows because booze was mixed with political discussion. It’s a poisonous topic and it constantly draws lines and in the sand that previously didn’t exist.
A lot of people still sort of abide by that rule for the most part. It only gets bad on social media and on holidays. My future father in law likes to start shit at the table. Generally, it goes pretty bad because he spouts off factually incorrect/racist things which pisses off my fiancé. She’s not diplomatic in her argument style so she immediately calls him stupid. And it quickly continues downhill. The problem with him is his only friends are his American legion biker buddies who all pretty much look and sound the same. I’ve hung around them a few times and it can get scary. Just because people are veterans does not make them good people.
I read something recently that said how in certain parts of Texas (and the South in general), calling someone a "liberal" is the socially-acceptable equivalent of using the n-word. I don't think that's far off. I don't consider myself a liberal, or a democrat, though I agree with a lot of what they believe as a party. The same way I don't consider myself a republican, but agree with some of what they support as a party as well. But lord help me if I say something left-leaning in public. I think I'd beaten worse if I yelled "I support big government" (I don't) in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, than if I yelled "I hate n----."
This is one of the things that always makes me question. Do conservatives really think that liberals haven't noticed how viscerally conservatives hate them? Do they think these calls for "civility" are being received as if they are being made in remotely good faith? I don't understand what they expect to liberals to do; their backs are against the wall with an enemy that continues to press the attack ever more aggressively. They have no choice but to resist with everything they have.
I am hoping, probably futilely, that cultural anxiety subsides a bit now that the democrats have some recourse to block Trumps agenda. Trump won’t let up and the democrats won’t be able to help themselves with the autistic screeching that will be every house investigation. My friends and I have traditionally sworn to not talk politics while out drinking. My most liberal friend has been so worked up about trump he can’t help himself. I had reassert the rule the other week when an argument broke down and he started yelling that the Senate needed to be abolished because it was made as a compromise to the slave states. I just stonewall the topics otherwise.
I think we're smart enough here to realize that a person's political affiliation has no bearing on emotional regulation. Then again, I got banned for calling someone a racist for saying something racist, so maybe I'm not the best person to be hearing this from. In any case, it isn't a good look to generalize entire swaths of people. Otherwise, people might think that all Republicans support white nationalists because Trump said shit that might be construed as racist..