(11-15-2018, 03:59 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(11-14-2018, 06:55 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(11-14-2018, 03:37 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Were the seats in bluer areas or redder areas? I live in one of those areas that flipped. I can tell you this, the Democrat who represent me has two years to cut a deal with the Republicans or she's gone in 2020. I didn't vote for her or the Republican she defeated. I voted for the Independent to wake up the Republican leadership. As I mentioned before, I didn't view the house as a major priority in this election. I viewed the Senate as the priority in this election. The Republican house needed a boot in the ass for its healthcare debacle. Like I said, Republicans are different than Democrats when it comes to failing to serve our interests. We'll accept a Democrat for a couple of years to get what we want in the long term. Unfortunately, blue voters don't have that luxury.
It seems natural for everybody to expect the country to flow their way, that everyone will see things from their perspective. I'm as guilty as anyone. How long before people notice that the economy tanks every time the Republicans apply voodoo economics? A few more storms have hit the south? While the Democrats have nominated a black and a woman, and this lost them about the whole deplorable vote, will the Republicans be that lucky forever? Trump will have two more years in office, which will give him time to amplify the see saw flip? The voters that made the southern strategy work are aging out of the voter pool?
We'll see. The Democrats are facing a mighty see saw.
Bob, I don't expect blue voters to start flowing our/my way. I expect red voters who live in blue areas who no longer have representation to start flowing our way and I expect red areas to start doing what blue areas are doing which blues are viewing as acceptable. I expect red areas to start ignoring blue laws and I expect the blues in those areas to start flowing you way as a result. I used to tell blues, I'll take one worker/ quality individual over ten welfare recipients/idiots (I'd be willing to trade 10 welfare recipients for one worker) any day. Yes, I'm willing to sacrifice mass quantity for fewer quality related people. If you don't see the value in that move then you're in trouble long term. So, this is what I see happening over the next decade as America continues positioning itself for the upcoming 4T. You shouldn't believe what the elites are telling you about us, you should be listening what we're telling you about us and you should be seeing how effective we are about they way we tend to operate and how intelligent we are as individuals and how much more common sense we have than the average blue. You're fortunate, you generally don't hear much coming from us.
1. There are 'blue areas' in 'red states' (Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Beaumont, El Paso, Laredo, the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and perhaps Fort Worth and Corpus Christi in Texas, as an example in one state), and 'red areas' in some 'blue' states (most rural areas in Minnesota). Renters tend to see the landlord as a grabber of a big chunk of income, and property owners see the tax collector as the big grabber. If one went to public schools, went to Cal-Berkeley and got a degree in electrical engineering and attribute personal success to the intellectual growth that your college experience allowed, then one may see the government making one and your landlord in Silicon Valley as an exploiter. If one had a bad time in public schools because some schoolmarm criticized your bad grammar, got a job as an auto repairman in rural Kentucky, and owns a home, then the tax collector is the gouger. Landlord? What landlord?
2. For many in Blue America, Donald Trump reminds them of the capitalist that they love to hate -- the landlord. Other capitalists may have established the company for which you work or providers of innovative products and other useful objects, and entertainment. If one is a software engineer in Silicon Valley, the landlord is probably an inferior in educational achievement, let alone technological prowess. The landlord probably inherited housing that one now rents that cost $35K a unit to build back in the 1970s and now costs you $35K a year to rent. That heir may have effectively majored in 'partying' at "Kegger State" before dropping out while on academic probation, and makes more than the software engineer by leasing a few dozen units two a captive market because housing is scarce. The landlord pays low property taxes because the property is valued as it was in the late 1970s for purposes of taxation, which explains how awful K-12 public education is in California. The low taxes create an incentive to not tear down old rental properties and replace them with newer properties that would be assessed more. The rent is too d@mn high, and you know why.
3. What would you do with the welfare recipients? Maybe I don't want to know. Welfare is often a transitory reality. People typically have an incentive (fuller participation in the consumer society, which allows more fun and more choice) to go from welfare to work. They might also have personal problems to solve -- like getting away from an abusive spouse, getting rehabilitation for substance abuse, dealing with a medical crisis, having an infant to take care of, getting job training when otherwise unemployable, or going to a place where there are genuine opportunities. The transition could include part-time work that does not fully meet personal needs.
4. The Republican Party needed a sharp kick to the derriere for going along with Donald Trump, someone completely unsuited as a leader of the biggest enterprise of all (even his business expertise is too limited and largely irrelevant to the government) and as a politician. Republicans who saw Donald Trump as the means of transforming America into a pure plutocracy needed to find that most peoople have loyalties to themselves or their immediate family above the enrichment of economic elites who see workers as livestock at best and vermin at worst. The Republican Party did well enough with the Tea Party and would probably be faring better if it had not gotten Donald Trump as President. What we liberals saw in Trump in 2016, more voters saw since he became President.
I can say this now: prospects look bleak for the Republican Party in 2020. even the most cautious predictive model that I have for the Presidency (Trump losing all states in which the total vote went against him in the 2018 Congressional election, which assumes that there will be no D-leaning increase in the total vote in 2020) projects the Democrat winning 284 electoral votes, the result of flipping Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to just about any Democrat. Add to this, Democrats have only eleven of thirty-three House seats to defend, only two of those in states that Trump won in 2016. Doug Jones will probably go down to defeat because he won under freakish circumstances unlikely to be repeated in one of the most Republican states in America. The other is Gary Peters, who won his Senate seat in Michigan during a Republican wave election in 2014 and was the only Democratic Senator to have won an open Senate seat that year. That is strong.
Polls indicate that Donald Trump is political poison. The scandals keep emerging, and I expect similar results with each scandal. Just as his credibility in approval ratings recovers a bit as the news stories abate, an indictment, arrest, or conviction causes another cratering in the President's approval.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.