but like on the other hand that's just my opinion
― guess I'll just sing dream on again (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:42 (thirteen years ago) link
That's so crude! Mormons prefer to refer to it as "estrous."
xxxp
― 17th Century Catholic Spain (Abbbottt), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:42 (thirteen years ago) link
they view that support as theirs by right of being not-as-evil. they should all go home to wherever in the hopes that the Democrats who replace them have something like an ethical center.
no such democrats -- or non-democrat progressives -- will fill that void. it will instead be filled by the GOP.
― Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:45 (thirteen years ago) link
in the short term, at least. and i haven't heard much of a case that things will be different in the future, tho i hope i'm wrong.
reid's a senator, jordy
yeah i know, a horribly formed "joke"
― crocodile swag district - teach me how to dundee (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:46 (thirteen years ago) link
How are they any different from the "Blue Dogs" that Emmanuel recruited in '06 and '08?
xpost
― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:46 (thirteen years ago) link
― Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, November 2, 2010 12:45 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
in the short term is correct - if one reelects them, one can be 100% assured that things will not get any better. I mean this is simple behavioral reinforcement: you can't reward behavior and expect it to change.
― guess I'll just sing dream on again (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:50 (thirteen years ago) link
daniel can you just appreciate that some people expect certain policies in return for their votes? politicians are smart about this shit - they'll position themselves as close to their opponent's left side as possible where they know they can count on getting a majority of the votes from the left and try to pick up some in the middle too. for some people that won't cut it - if you want my vote you have to actually fairly represent what i believe. it's just this game where the pol'll slide further & further right and be like "lol asshole, you're still voting for me tho right?" at a certain point it becomes - no, fuck you
― wakafledia (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:54 (thirteen years ago) link
It's delicious and totally appropriate that my representative, a GOP warmonger who's been in office since Claude Pepper died, has run to the left of every one of her opponents.
― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 00:56 (thirteen years ago) link
daniel can you just appreciate that some people expect certain policies in return for their votes?
yes, i can and do appreciate that.
― Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:05 (thirteen years ago) link
I read this reasonable post with much pain, but really, how is a vote anything but an endorsement of their actions?
votes have been so close and contested recently, but still we're stuck conflating the vote with a popular mandate. bush used the term himself the week he won in 2004; obama did as much in the way he poured so much abstract idealism into his campaign & speeches. but it's always total fiction; obama did not win as much as mccain lost, and everyone who cast that vote with uneasiness have had their fears played like a violin in the two years since.
your moral abstention is not going to make the pitiful remnants of this party find the strength to fight harder. there's no way to make yourself heard through silence when everyone else is yelling -- abstention is basically just leaving your friends behind to fight. also, voting is probably not going to kill you
― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:18 (thirteen years ago) link
obama did not win as much as mccain lost,
for the record:
http://blog.4president.us/2008/2008ec.gif
― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:22 (thirteen years ago) link
so nuts to that.
just noticed that mccain carved a boner going up the country
― crocodile swag district - teach me how to dundee (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:23 (thirteen years ago) link
dunno if i can trust 4president.us to give me accurate info
― markers, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:24 (thirteen years ago) link
obama did not win as much as mccain lost
Maybe and maybe not, but if that's true it's doubly so in the House, where many Dem seats were won by narrow margins in strongly Republican districts, and many of those Congressmen couldn't reasonably have been expected to hang on to those seats for long no matter what else happened.
― kenan, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:26 (thirteen years ago) link
OK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege2008.svg
Politicians claim "mandates" all the time. The difference with Obama's victory is that he could legitimately claim one: the biggest Dem winner since LBJ.
― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:26 (thirteen years ago) link
voting is probably not going to kill you
Thanks for the opening, Milton. An Election Eve message from the dead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:29 (thirteen years ago) link
<3
― kenan, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:32 (thirteen years ago) link
"I'm sure that once the election is over, your country will improve immediately."
I can't be quite as curmudgeonly as George, but I wouldn't want to get caught trying to debate him on those points.
― kenan, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:38 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't think 08 can be described as "obama did not win as much as mccain lost" -- whoever grabbed the dem nomination had it basically in the bag. forgive me milton but this sounds like the kind of thing victor davis hanson and michael barone tell themselves.
anyway, i appreciate principled non-voting, i really do. but i don't do it. i just don't think principled voting occurs. like, when i pull the lever, it's not a stamp of blanket moral approval of everything that the powerful do for the remainder of their term. it's hardly a statment at all, just rather weak indication of preference: i'd rather this person hold that seat rather than some other person likely to get a majority. i understand that i am to feel implicated in this, somehow, morally, but i don't feel this way at all. i pulled the lever, and whatever they do next is on them.
i'll put it blutly: i know exactly to what degree this 'regime' has been bunglers or blunderers or cowards or miscalculators or over-calculators or just outright killers, i read the papers. but i'm going to get up tomorrow morning and vote for everyone i can find with a D next to their name, without regret, or a second look back, as i probably will do for the rest of my life.
i'm sure this is probably just as an infuriating decision to some as people advocating quietism or dropping out. i don't begrudge anyone their decision to do or not do anything politically. except vote for haley barbour, that guy looks like boss hogg and sounds like it too, come on.
― goole, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:39 (thirteen years ago) link
/ I admit to overstating my case; the ratio was huge and the enthusiasm for obama was not an illusion
still, we owe many of the undecided votes simply to a pragmatic unwillingness to vote for mccain, and it's those people who have been targeted by the Tea Party. they'll be voting from the heart this time; it's our turn to be pragmatic.
― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:45 (thirteen years ago) link
Fuck the heart, seriously.
― kenan, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:45 (thirteen years ago) link
btw u guys are missin a helluva ballgame
― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:47 (thirteen years ago) link
they'll be voting from the heart this time; it's our turn to be pragmatic.
This means nothing. "The heart"? It's more like -- no, EXACTLY like -- the "gut" that Colbert talks about. Call me elitist, but Tea Partiers don't understand a thing about what they're voting for.
― kenan, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:48 (thirteen years ago) link
hm. 3 -- 0 giants in 7th.
― Daniel, Esq., Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:48 (thirteen years ago) link
Morbs otm again. There's little point in this particular conversation.
― kenan, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 01:49 (thirteen years ago) link
For those of you not voting for Democrats, do you live in states with ballot measures? and are you voting for them? Just curious. Ballot measures and candidates have always seemed like totally separate things to me, yet they are conflated together as "voting".
e.g. the marijuana initiatives in California and Oregon.
― sleeve, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 02:56 (thirteen years ago) link
I've got eight amendments to our state constitution on which we're voting.
― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 02:57 (thirteen years ago) link
My district is a safe socially liberal Republican seat.
― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 02:58 (thirteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFSIcI0wmGw
― No Good, Scrunty-Looking, Narf Herder (Gukbe), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 03:48 (thirteen years ago) link
for the record
For the record, Mo. went for McCain.
― (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 03:56 (thirteen years ago) link
Tried to open all messages to read stuff from two hours ago and it practically crashed my browser (and, yes, I'm on a lame internet connection)
NEW THREAD, PLEASE
― Cunga, Tuesday, 2 November 2010 03:59 (thirteen years ago) link
US POLITICS election/post-election edition: your country will improve immediately.
― pons (crüt), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 04:08 (thirteen years ago) link