Remember that time way back long ago when Trump and the GOP supported an alleged child molester for senator and still lost?
This was a completely stunning development. It feels like the first good news I've heard in a while. The hottest take I've seen so far is that Democrats can take both House and Senate in 2018. While I delight in the mental picture of Trump facing a Democratic Congress, a Democratic Senate flip is completely rose-tinted. But if there's a president who could manage it, it's our McDonald's Paper Bag-in-chief.
Sidebar: PredictIt market for "Which party will control the House after 2018 midterms?" stands at 60% Democrat. The corresponding market for the Senate had the Democrats jump from around 32% to 42%.
Some twitter jabs whose value is entirely feel-good: The real winner is Steve Bannon. It takes skill to lose Alabama to a pro-choice Democrat. Moore liked this night when it was much younger. Jeff Sessions gave us Bob Mueller and Doug Jones. Thanks Jeff! And a video: Jake Tapper in an exchange with a Moore campaign official, wherein official tries explaining why Muslims can’t hold office by claiming they’d have to swear on a bible which they can’t do “ethically.” Tapper’s response is priceless
If it were possible to get videos as tattoos, I'd have a hard time convincing myself not to get that one.
Tapper's response is most reasonable. I'm not from the US, and I know that. The priceless part is six seconds of silence and the '...oh' face of the fat cat. Trump learned not to keep quiet under pressure. That guy? Man.
I've enjoyed Current Affairs' take on it, an article titled "A Victory For Basic Standards Of Human Moral Conduct". But I think snoodog is basically right; this is a sign of how far the Republicans have fallen, but stupid Republicans make stupid Democrats.
Great that Moore lost but shitty that Jones was the guy to beat him. His victory really reinforces the democratic party of courting big out of state money, shifting right, and giving minorities only token support without any meaningful promises. Once again we had an election were democrats put up the shittiest candidate that they thought could win and in this case the bet payed off and he just barely squeaked by.
How is Jones the shittiest candidate? I'm ignorant of him other than what's trotted out in articles from the last month or two. And are you attributing his "barely squeaking by" to his shittiness as a candidate? To me, he barely squeaked by because he's a Democrat in the one the most thoroughly Republican states in the Union.
I think the takeaway from this is that Democrats' best chance of success is to run against Trump and against Republicnism, and not against any specific candidate. Trump's approval rating isn't likely to rise any time soon, and if they enact tax cuts for rich people and no one else, it will accelerate our collective hatred of him/them. Marco Rubio tweeted a critical jab at the tax 'plan' yesterday. It read something like: 20.94% corporate rate to give families a tax cut was too expensive, but 21% rate to give married couples making over $1 million a cut isn't? That's the kind of amoral bullshit that every republican must be held to account over (including Little Marco, who will inevitably vote for the bill). Also, Manafort's trial starts in May, and Mueller is pulling apart the Trump Trainwreck, so there's a lot of messed up shit that's going to in the next 10-11 months. Unpredictability will continue to be 2018's theme.
A lot of Americans spent 2017 bailing on the Republican Party Apparently the Democrats had a similar problem with Barack Obama (because he's black). But then, historically more people identify as Democrat than Republican anyway... they just don't vote.
That's a good cause. I spend my money here. I've never donated to any candidate before, but she's an old friend of mine who's trying to turn a solidly red district around. The current rep, Dave Trott, reportedly worth over $177,000,000, has already decided against running in this climate. A few GOP slugs who hang around Michigan politics have entered the race, but they're obviously scared. Even though we're friends, I wouldn't be giving her any money if I didn't think she had a chance to win.
This election is just one more data point in my wish for a Constitutional Amendment to ban persons over 70 from holding elected office. I am 10000% against term limits. But someone born back when inter-racial marriage was illegal and nothing digital existed should not be making decisions that impact the future of the country,
I wrote an article about the constitutional amendment process and why it's practically a dead letter, which is a Bad Thing. It's bad because it frustrates strong national consensus, such as the Equal Rights Amendment which rose very close to the three-quarters-of-the-states requirement for ratification (It was ratified by 35 out of the 38 states necessary and ultimately failed). The Framers rightly but more or less arbitrarily chose to make the amendment process much harder than regular legislation. But they were operating in the dark--constitutions and their amendment processes were a brand new concept and so they didn't have much to draw on. Two super-majorities is tough, especially now with 50 states and 535 congresspeople. Even Antonin Scalia, who staunchly revered the Constitution, thought the Article V amendment process was too restrictive. He reasoned that in order to block an amendment’s incorporation, a bare majority of the people within the thirteen least populous states could impede a proposal from reaching the three-fourths of states necessary for ratification. That comes to about 2% of the population. “It ought to be hard, but it shouldn’t be that hard.” (Interview with Scalia and Ginsberg) The other danger about frustrating amendments is you force lawyers to lobby the Court to see their arguments as already existing in the Constitution rather than made out of whole cloth. Granted, I like some of the creative discovery of rights that the Court has found, but it can be unpredictable and cuts both ways. The Court constitutionalized a right to abortion in 1973, building on earlier discoveries of the right to privacy. In 2008/2010, it constitutionalized the private possession of firearms for self-defense, hunting, and sport, when the second amendment proscribes the federal government from neutering state militias by over-regulating firearms (and says nothing about state governments regulating the private possession of firearms by their civilians). Amendments are tough.