Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Not so much, because the turnout for different groups goes up and down.

Bless you for being willing to vote for both parties -- if voters won't do that, then things go to hell, as we are discovering.

I actually have one race I blanked I should have voted Republican in, which is the Weld/Silber race in Massachusetts. I just couldn't vote for either, but, frankly, Weld may have been a sniveling little patrician prig eager to gut higher ed in the state (we have Harvard, why do we need UMass?), but he wasn't a racist and that should have been enough.

I'm more willing to cross party lines today than I ever have been, but less likely to find a Republican worth crossing for.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I actually have one race I blanked I should have voted Republican in, which is the Weld/Silber race in Massachusetts. I just couldn't vote for either, but, frankly, Weld may have been a sniveling little patrician prig eager to gut higher ed in the state (we have Harvard, why do we need UMass?), but he wasn't a racist and that should have been enough.

I'm more willing to cross party lines today than I ever have been, but less likely to find a Republican worth crossing for.

Yep. I voted for Weld.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

“So much of Donald Trump’s politics is symbolic,” Gest explained. “They’re symbolic in the sense that this is what people want to hear and if it doesn’t get done, it’s almost beside the point because he’s elevating the prerogatives of his constituents to the national stage after having been relegated to the fringes of American politics for decades.”

“When Donald Trump went up in Cleveland and said messianically,’I am your voice,’ that’s precisely what people heard,” Gest continued. “The sense of having a voice suddenly, after feeling voiceless for so long is powerful. It’s not in their cultural interests to vote against him, no matter how little he has delivered to actually help them in any kind of material way.”

“The way they understood racism is different from the way we understand racism,” said Gest. “For them, racism has become an instrument of silence. It is a way of invalidating people. By saying someone is a racist, it means they cease to matter. Don’t listen to them.”

“So, when people said to me, ‘Now, I’m not a racist but …,’ what they were actually saying to me was, ‘Listen to what I’m about to tell you, and don’t dismiss me.’”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.399db293bc28

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

“So much of Donald Trump’s politics is symbolic,” Gest explained. “They’re symbolic in the sense that this is what people want to hear and if it doesn’t get done, it’s almost beside the point because he’s elevating the prerogatives of his constituents to the national stage after having been relegated to the fringes of American politics for decades.”

“When Donald Trump went up in Cleveland and said messianically,’I am your voice,’ that’s precisely what people heard,” Gest continued. “The sense of having a voice suddenly, after feeling voiceless for so long is powerful. It’s not in their cultural interests to vote against him, no matter how little he has delivered to actually help them in any kind of material way.”

“The way they understood racism is different from the way we understand racism,” said Gest. “For them, racism has become an instrument of silence. It is a way of invalidating people. By saying someone is a racist, it means they cease to matter. Don’t listen to them.”

“So, when people said to me, ‘Now, I’m not a racist but …,’ what they were actually saying to me was, ‘Listen to what I’m about to tell you, and don’t dismiss me.’”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.399db293bc28

TM

“Much of white working-class politics has been to create distinction with a group that they thought they were above,” Gest told me. “So much of American history has been white voters seeking to reinstate ways to subordinate people of ethno-religious and ethno-racial difference.”

It's about social status, and subordination.

[Adder]

If we had a functioning Congress, impeachment proceedings would be imminent. But we don't. Fun.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

My recollection is that she has said and done some truly loopy things. To be honest, I don't recall what. Hey -- if you like Maxine, promote her because you like her, not because it pisses off other people.

She can be quite funny. On Maher (where she's a not infrequent guest), she can fire off some funny one liners. But in serious exchanges, she seems to get overly excited, near-hyperventilating, and collapse into the worst of word saladry.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What you call Allah I think of as Jesus's dad, although I'm a little confused lately about how to think of Jesus's divinity/non-divinity.

As a character (or embellished historical figure), there's pretty solid evidence his storyline was based on Zoroastrian myths.

Re that confusion, I'd say flip a coin.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

You are absolutely dreaming. People on the right are not, by and large, motivated by pragmatic arguments about what would work better.

Enough of them to make a difference in the election are. I've voted D and R. So has Hank. You can swing people like us.

They are motivated by disagreement with and resentment of the left, of "coastal elites" and colored people.

That's just the cuckoo working class GOP people. A D can easily win without them if he/she peels off moderate swing voters.

They don't mind wasteful government administration if the waste is going to people like them.

Again, that's the cuckoo pants working class GOP folks.

If Democrats used your lines and threaten to win elections with them, so-called moderate Republicans would find new reasons to be skeptical.

Maybe. But I think you'll find a lot would be more open minded than you realize. And what do you have to lose? What's your option? More of doing the same tired thing over and over again and waiting for a better result?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

If we had a functioning Congress, impeachment proceedings would be imminent. But we don't. Fun.

It's not about the functionality of Congress. It's about the Republican Party.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

As a character (or embellished historical figure), there's pretty solid evidence his storyline was based on Zoroastrian myths.

Re that confusion, I'd say flip a coin.

Much of the New Testament was written decades later by people who did not personally know him. The different books were written at different times and places by different people for different purposes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Enough of them to make a difference in the election are. I've voted D and R. So has Hank. You can swing people like us.

This is at least 75% correct, but it's not clear to me that there are enough voters like Hank to make a difference.

That's just the cuckoo working class GOP people. A D can easily win without them if he/she peels off moderate swing voters.

You go to war with the voters you have, not the voters like Idealized Swing Voter Sebby.

Maybe. But I think you'll find a lot would be more open minded than you realize. And what do you have to lose? What's your option? More of doing the same tired thing over and over again and waiting for a better result?

Where have you been the last two decades? For years, Republican lawmakers who worked with Democrats have been punished for it. Remember Robert Bennett? Arlen Specter? Jim Jeffords? And for eight years, we had a President committed to the idea that he could reach across the aisle to get things done, and eager to engage with Republicans. The Republican Party would not work with him. On health care, for example, Democrats took a policy approach originally developed by conservatives and then implemented by the Republican governor of Massachusetts, and could not get Republicans to sign on, resulting in this nonsense -- which you subscribe to -- that compelling people to buy private insurance violates your constitutional rights. When Heritage and Mitt Romney were pushing Romneycare, you didn't hear that objection, but supposed moderate Republicans all fell in line behind lockstep opposition to it when Democrats pushed it. Republicans may say they're open minded, but it's not when it might actually involve voting against other Republicans for something that Democrats support. And that is how we got to Trump.

What are my options? One is what TM said to do: Organize and turn out. Is there another?

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

It's not about the functionality of Congress. It's about the Republican Party.

Right.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

Right.

Just to tie two threads together, the basic problem is that while some Republicans are willing to make moderate noises when it doesn't matter, most Republicans are unwilling to take concrete action to split from their party, whether by voting for a candidate from another party, or by voting for legislation that Democrats support and Republicans oppose. Also, because many Republicans form their policy preferences in opposition to Democrats, the party is fundamentally unable to do anything in a bipartisan way, or to respond to pressure to moderate.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

If we had a functioning Congress, impeachment proceedings would be imminent. But we don't. Fun.

Or perhaps Trump was just engaging in business as usual?

LANKFORD: Then you made a comment earlier a the attorney general, the previous attorney general asking you about the investigation on the Clinton e-mails saying you were asked to not call it an investigation anymore. But call it a matter. You said that confused you. You can give us additional details on that?

COMEY: Well, it concerned me because we were at the point where we refused to confirm the existence as we typically do of an investigation for months. And was getting to a place where that looked silly because the campaigns we're talking about interacting with the FBI in the course of our work. The Clinton campaign at the time was using all kinds of euphemisms, security matters, things like that for what was going on.

We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to testify and talk publicly about it I wanted to know was she going to authorize us to confirm we have an investigation. She said yes, don't call it that, call it a matter. I said why would I do that? She said, just call it a matter. You look back in hindsight, if I looked back and said this isn't a hill worth dying on so I just said the press is going to completely ignore it. That's what happened when I said we opened a matter.

They all reported the FBI has an investigation open. So that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI's work and that's concerning.

LANKFORD: You gave impression that the campaign was somehow using the language as the FBI because you were handed the campaign language?

COMEY: I don't know whether it was intentional or not but it gave the impression that the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way it was describing that. It was inaccurate. We had an investigation open for the federal bureau of investigation, we had an investigation open at the time. That gave me a quesy feeling.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/politi...nch/index.html

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Or perhaps Trump was just engaging in business as usual?

LANKFORD: Then you made a comment earlier a the attorney general, the previous attorney general asking you about the investigation on the Clinton e-mails saying you were asked to not call it an investigation anymore. But call it a matter. You said that confused you. You can give us additional details on that?

COMEY: Well, it concerned me because we were at the point where we refused to confirm the existence as we typically do of an investigation for months. And was getting to a place where that looked silly because the campaigns we're talking about interacting with the FBI in the course of our work. The Clinton campaign at the time was using all kinds of euphemisms, security matters, things like that for what was going on.

We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to testify and talk publicly about it I wanted to know was she going to authorize us to confirm we have an investigation. She said yes, don't call it that, call it a matter. I said why would I do that? She said, just call it a matter. You look back in hindsight, if I looked back and said this isn't a hill worth dying on so I just said the press is going to completely ignore it. That's what happened when I said we opened a matter.

They all reported the FBI has an investigation open. So that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI's work and that's concerning.

LANKFORD: You gave impression that the campaign was somehow using the language as the FBI because you were handed the campaign language?

COMEY: I don't know whether it was intentional or not but it gave the impression that the attorney general was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way it was describing that. It was inaccurate. We had an investigation open for the federal bureau of investigation, we had an investigation open at the time. That gave me a quesy feeling.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/politi...nch/index.html

What about that is the same as asking the FBI for his personal loyalty to you, asking him more than once to stop investigating your friend, firing him because he didn't, telling the Russians that you fired him to take the heat off and then publicly saying you fired him to end the investigation?

I mean, aside from your deep-seated need to insist that this administration is not substantively different.