Objectively intelligent.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Neither do I, but it's still dumb.

I don't know how Pelosi deals with Schumer. She and McConnell play 3D chess. Both are clearly highly skilled operators. Schumer is a milquetoast Wall Street sycophant who only knows to whine. And when he tries to orchestrate a hit, like he did in the Kavanaugh hearings with late stage witness and evidence dumps, he can't even do that correctly.

He's also spineless and bought off in the most transparent way. He'll be playing golf with Trump at Mar A Lago in six months.

Neither Schumer nor Pelosi are particularly good at being national political leaders, which makes sense, since one is a Congresswoman from San Francisco and the other is a Senator from New York. They are legislatively gifted. If they were gifted at speaking to low-information, swing voters, they'd have run for other offices long ago. Both did a good job of negotiating with Trump this year, and a lousy job of selling it to anyone outside DC. But it's not like any expects McConnell to say great things to motivate the GOP base. It's not what he does. Pelosi and Schumer fare better when they have a Democratic President like Obama (or Biden) to lead, and they can go back to making sausage.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Sure, there is an expressive element, but I still want health care.

The right will always be demonizing someone on the left. It is what you do when you have no positive proposals of your own. I remember when Ted Kennedy was their favorite bogeyman. I'm just amazed at how gullible their voters are that they are still willing to bite on "they're a bunch of socialists".

I want health care too. I want a well designed policy crafted by experts who understand the issues and the cost curves and the incentives and who have crafted things that work. If that's what you want, then we need Democratic politicians who understand how to message around things other than health-care wonkery, to win over the voters whose voting is not shaped most by their policy preferences.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

This is false. The only place that split the ticket for a Senator was Maine, which voted for Biden and Collins. And Democrats won the House. The reason that Republicans maintain their hold on the Senate is that the Senate is fundamentally undemocratic in a way that favors Republicans. Democratic Senators represent far more voters than Republicans. 40 million people in California are represented by 2 Senators. 37 million people in Utah, Iowa, Nevada, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming are represented 36 Senators, and if I'm counting correctly 26 of those Senators are Republicans.

I know you are happy with this because it suits your preferences, but admit that the system is rigged instead of pretending that the country wants a GOP Senate.

So.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I want health care too. I want a well designed policy crafted by experts who understand the issues and the cost curves and the incentives and who have crafted things that work. If that's what you want, then we need Democratic politicians who understand how to message around things other than health-care wonkery, to win over the voters whose voting is not shaped most by their policy preferences.

I though you said ACA was all we needed?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

I though you said ACA was all we needed?

I think it needs some fixing, in light of a decade of experience and four years of Republican sabotage. And if the Supreme Court tosses it, we will need more.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Apparently, he was never going to win TX. That was media horseshit all around.
It was high quality, however. Even I bought it, and I have a shrine to Matt Taibbi in my basement and a huge man crush on Glenn Greenwald. Seeing the media so entirely discredited and shown to be biased is probably the most satisfying element of this election cycle. And yet I read some data, obviously manipulated, and concluded TX might go blue. The bastards put one over on me. Touche.

The second the first returns came in, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Biden wasn't winning by enough, and it was Beto / Cruz all over again.

I didn't think he'd win, but I did think he'd be a lot closer, and I know a lot of people in the party trying to figure out what happened. A lot of people are surprised that more state house seats weren't flipped.

Running weak state-wide candidates and not having a ground game really hurt the Dems. Resting on Beto's laurels from two years ago didn't help either. His strategy was physically going places and pressing hands to hands. And it nearly worked.

Hegar impressed Hollywood with some pretty flashy ads, so she got tons of outside endorsements and cash, but she didn't make inroads at all with the party. Every single person she beat in the primary endorsed the other guy in the runoff. I don't remember her ever coming to Houston, I don't remember her being that interested in traveling all over. Covid obviously hurt, and the Republicans had NO problems going door-to-door.

We'll see what the next cycle brings. I've heard rumblings that Julian Castro is going for Abbott. Dunno what Beto is going to do, though I hear he might go after Cruz again. There's a lot of head scratching about what is going on in the Valley, so I imagine a lot of outreach is going on.

But yeah, I was so proud of Biden from staying away from fracking and fossil fuels for so long, and then the damned second debate he had to bring it up. I know tons of people out of work right now in O&G. And lord knows if it's going to recover to the level it was. Salt did not need to be rubbed in that particular wound if he had a prayer of winning.

That said, with a million plus new voters, it was always going to be hard to see where exactly they fall. Polling was pretty even for Biden/Trump towards the last month or so.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

So.

So let’s dance!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

The second the first returns came in, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Biden wasn't winning by enough, and it was Beto / Cruz all over again.

I didn't think he'd win, but I did think he'd be a lot closer, and I know a lot of people in the party trying to figure out what happened. A lot of people are surprised that more state house seats weren't flipped.

Running weak state-wide candidates and not having a ground game really hurt the Dems. Resting on Beto's laurels from two years ago didn't help either. His strategy was physically going places and pressing hands to hands. And it nearly worked.

Hegar impressed Hollywood with some pretty flashy ads, so she got tons of outside endorsements and cash, but she didn't make inroads at all with the party. Every single person she beat in the primary endorsed the other guy in the runoff. I don't remember her ever coming to Houston, I don't remember her being that interested in traveling all over. Covid obviously hurt, and the Republicans had NO problems going door-to-door.

We'll see what the next cycle brings. I've heard rumblings that Julian Castro is going for Abbott. Dunno what Beto is going to do, though I hear he might go after Cruz again. There's a lot of head scratching about what is going on in the Valley, so I imagine a lot of outreach is going on.

But yeah, I was so proud of Biden from staying away from fracking and fossil fuels for so long, and then the damned second debate he had to bring it up. I know tons of people out of work right now in O&G. And lord knows if it's going to recover to the level it was. Salt did not need to be rubbed in that particular wound if he had a prayer of winning.

That said, with a million plus new voters, it was always going to be hard to see where exactly they fall. Polling was pretty even for Biden/Trump towards the last month or so.

I feel bad for the frackers here. It’s really provided a huge gift to otherwise dead economies. And natural gas is clean.

But the LNG plants planned here might now be scrapped. And the jobs that paid well there might be replaced with lesser ones in big box warehouses/logistics centers that are going up like crazy to service the new work from home economy.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

You know those breathalyzers they hook up to drunk driver's cars, where they can’t turn their car on if they can’t blow clean? Would you be willing to have one hooked to your computer?

Mister patent guy should patent that shit. Or an IQ test that lets you on the internet only if you pass.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

You know those breathalyzers they hook up to drunk driver's cars, where they can’t turn their car on if they can’t blow clean? Would you be willing to have one hooked to your computer?

This is the kind of shit you post when I say something sympathetic to lefties and you want to disagree out of some sort of centrist grumpy old man instinct, but you can't find a way that I'm wrong. It's the Hank equivalent of Sebby calling Krugman shrill.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

This is the kind of shit you post when I say something sympathetic to lefties and you want to disagree out of some sort of centrist grumpy old man instinct, but you can't find a way that I'm wrong. It's the Hank equivalent of Sebby calling Krugman shrill.

It brought a smile to a guy who has been in groupie orgies. I’ll stand by the post.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

It brought a smile to a guy who has been in groupie orgies. I’ll stand by the post.

If that's all you got, OK then.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

If that's all you got, OK then.

Simp, you said the actions of congress and the President 2008-2010 somehow set in motion great economic growth through 2018 or so. That is absurd, and I really don’t plan to engage, but I suspect everyone else on this board knows it was absurd.

There was a big lawyer in Detroit I’d run into all the time. He lied like a mad man. At some point I just started lying back to mediators rather than trying to correct his lies. It was freeing in a way. I suspect that is what happens to you when you engage Sebby and he is just riffing. Honestly I regret lowering my arguments due to frustration. WTTW

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Simp, you said the actions of congress and the President 2008-2010 somehow set in motion great economic growth through 2018 or so. That is absurd, and I really don’t plan to engage, but I suspect everyone else on this board knows it was absurd.

I can see that you might have read it that way if you weren't paying attention. Sebby said, "Were progressives to take control of all three beaches, we’d have what we had in Trump’s first two years in reverse." If you're paying attention now, you'll know he meant branches of government, not beaches. My point was that we had Democratic control of the Presidency, House and Senate from 2008-10, and it wasn't "Trump's first two years in reverse." I meant that that Democratic Congress was responsible for a decade of economic prosperity in the same way that I mean that those two years were a "hellscape," which is to say that both were obviously hyperbole. You seem to have figured out that I didn't think it was really a hellscape, so I guess you were batting .500.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

oops