He’s the match; we’re the ammo. Only we can stop ourselves - Trump thread 86

[TheClaws]

This is one of the most apt political cartoon I’ve seen.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3393501-Couldnt-think-of-a-pithy-quote-so-have-this-instead-Trump-85

Women's election this one.
Abrams not conceding.
edition.cnn.com/2018/11/07/politics/georgia-governors-race-stacey-abrams/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-11-07T12%3A55%3A06&utm_source=twCNN&utm_term=image

This amused me.

@JesKast
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The Colorado cake baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple now has a gay governor.

rousette Bet you saw this:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/america-midterms-democrats-trump

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/midterms-2018/trump-midterm-elections-who-won-house-senate-results-democrats-republicans-summary-nancy-pelosi-a8621276.html

Love it woman!!

xNevada votes in a Dem governor AND a Dem senator. This is pretty epic!

We didn't get a Blue Wave, but at least we caused a ripple in the pond. And I think it will be a stern reminder that we cannot rest on our laurels in the build up to 2020.

This song serves as a warning to us that we still have more work to do. And as a promise threat to the GOP that we will not give up!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvVk-r9ut8

Senate popular vote:
Democrats: 40,558,262 (55.4%)
Republicans: 31,490,026 votes (43.0%)

Senate seats: Republicans +3

lionheart - and that Senate popular vote result is presumably because of the gerrymandering that's been going on?

I'm still cross and sad and worried.

Donald J. Trump
‏
Verified account

@realDonaldTrump
1 hour ago

'Those that worked with me in this incredible Midterm Election, embracing certain policies and principles, did very well. Those that did not, say goodbye! Yesterday was such a very Big Win, and all under the pressure of a Nasty and Hostile Media!'

42 minutes ago

'I will be doing a news conference at The White House - 11:30 A.M. Will be discussing our success in the Midterms!'

26 minutes ago

'To any of the pundits or talking heads that do not give us proper credit for this great Midterm Election, just remember two words - FAKE NEWS!'

15 minutes ago

'If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!'

Marathon not a sprint, I agree, Across
Was that that lovely Bob Dylan fellow? It would't play for me. But I think I'll put some on in the car to celebrate. A good day.
(so looking forward to the Pelosi Years)

Oh, and right on point, I see this on Twitter!

George Takei
‏Verified account @GeorgeTakei
41s41 seconds ago

The Senate is a like form of historical gerrymander, forcing certain votes to count far less in the results. We can't do much about a 240 year old rule, but we should understand how a national popular vote win of 12.4% on Senate races results in the LOSS of three seats for Dems.
0 replies 6 retweets 17 likes

www.vox.com/2018/11/6/18038378/midterm-election-results-resistance-works

Yeah the Senate is not a democratic institution. It was designed as a check on "mob rule" and a compromise between the bigger states and smaller states. The problem is that the Framers didn't dream of a situation where the bigger states would be SO much bigger than the smaller ones. So we are stuck with 2 Senators representing 570,000 Wyoming residents and 2 Senators representing 39 million California residents....

GrinitchSpinach - and there has never been any thought of amending the constitution to make the Senate more representative of the 21st century?

It will never happen, Bolleaux, because the procedure to amend the Constitution is thus: 2/3 of Congress must pass the amendment, and 3/4 of the states must ratify it. The less populous, more rural states enjoy their outsized power verymuchthankyou and would never vote to give it up.

I sometimes fantasize about progressives moving en masse to Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas... The reason this doesn't actually happen is there are few jobs there compared to urban centers. Cost of living is low, though!

I'm not uncontent with the night's results. 🙂

I haven't posted on here before, but I live in the US although I'm British.

What is concerning me, is that looking at The Telegraph, they are posting the US election results as if a) Republicans have just had a massive win, and b) this is a GOOD thing.

In fact, the front page of The Telegraph looks remarkably like a a pro-Trump paper.

WTF?

Hi, KickAssAngel, hope you're doing OK as a Brit in the US

Not for nothing is that paper known as the Torygraph by Private Eye readers! I'm afraid that's your answer!

Trump is certainly trying to spin this as a win, but that's how he'll approach anything. Weird that the Telegraph would take that at face value.

To me this looks like a major and possibly permanent realignment of the suburbs and exurbs, which used to be swingy or pro-GOP, falling into line with Democratic urban centers now. Rural white people can hold on to power longer than they should because of the Senate, the electoral college, and gerrymandering, but I don't think it can hold forever. We saw Texas come very close to flipping blue last night (and indeed Democrats picked up a bunch of TX House seats!), and Florida, if it doesn't sink under rising sea levels, will flip eventually, too, as its future is younger and browner. Arizona and Nevada fall in this category too. It might not happen in 2020, but in my lifetime I think these states will turn blue, and that will be the end of the GOP lock on federal power. They'll still be able to cause mischief in the Senate for a long time, though,

"The Senate is a like form of historical gerrymander, forcing certain votes to count far less in the results. We can't do much about a 240 year old rule, but we should understand how a national popular vote win of 12.4% on Senate races results in the LOSS of three seats for Dems."

Is he really that stupid? The last time Class 1 Senators were elected the result was D 25, R 8, on a 11.6% D popular vote lead, in 2012. This time, the result is looking like being 22-11 on a 12.4% lead, which is less disproportionate in favour of the Ds, but still disproportionate.

And he might like to compare the California Senate race between 2012 and 2018:

2012 California
D 7.86 million
R 4.71 million

2018 California
D1 3.3 million
D2 2.8 million

So ~4.7 million Republicans were not able to vote for a Republican.

If you look at the big states (so the popular vote):

CA: 2012: D+25 2018: disenfranchised
TX: 2012: R+16 2018 R+3 (swing to D 1.033m votes)
FL: 2012 D+13 2018 R+0 (swing to R 1.031m votes)
NY: 2012 D+46, 2018 D+33 (swing to R 1.22 m votes)
PA: 2012 D+9 2018 D+13 (swing to D 0.10m votes)
OH: 2012 D+6 2018 D+6
NJ: 2012 D+20 2018 D+9 (swing to R 0.397m votes)

In terms of the popular vote the Republicans actually did considerably better than last time. Hence winning more seats .

Also, I am exhausted by the constant refrain about "white women" in these elections. Number one, it's white MEN who vote for the lawless racist misogynist party in the greatest number, but somehow everyone assumes that's just natural and they get a pass.

Second, it's EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY that accounts for the huge numbers of white women who voted Trump/support the GOP now:

www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/getting-know-white-voters

Meanwhile, among women, if you remove evangelicals, white women with and without a college degree have the same (very low) opinion of the president.

White evangelical women without a college degree give Trump a 68 percent job approval rating, while those with a degree give him a much lower, though still positive 51 percent approval rating. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval among white, non-evangelical women without a college degree is 35 percent, just five points higher than the 30 percent approval rating he gets from white, non-evangelical college-educated women.

Of course these are grown adults and therefore responsible for their votes, but I really wish people (pundits especially) would stop pretending that it's a white-women-in-general problem and nothing to do with fundamentalist religious ideologies that promote misogyny and racism and work actively to isolate their adherents, especially female ones from secular society including public education and traditional news sources. Who has hands on the actual levers of power in these communities? Mike Pence or "Mother"?

SMDH.

in fact, the front page of The Telegraph looks remarkably like a a pro-Trump paper

It was the same during the 2016 election. The Telegraph is rabidly pro Brexit and pro Boris Johnson aka the UK's Trump. I'm sure Steve Bannon is somewhere in that mix. 🙄

You see, I really do believe that every person, no matter how much I may disagree with them, should get a vote, but I'm really quite worried about the spin around this.

Of course Trump is going to claim it's the best vote ever, just the best. He'd say that no matter what.

But I really am concerned about how many governments seem to be promoting far right views. The far right people in most countries really are a small minority, yet they are grabbing so many of the headlines and making themselves sound more mainstream. Then all those 'big block' voters (like evangelicals) just follow the lead.

When Trump was running, the British press were happy to mock and vilify him. Even when he was newly elected that continued. Now it's like he's the voice of the righteous and we should all be so happy to see him in power.

We should never forget just HOW far to the right the American Republicans are, and how much further right the Tories have been sliding over the past decade. They really are a minority of extreme right-wing politics. It depresses me that the far right is just being normalized.