Three things the US has (just about) seen the last of

If the shopping mall is down on its heels, someone has neglected to tell the ones in and about Seattle. The Westlake Southcenter mall south of Seattle just added a whole new, even more glitzy, even more disorienting concourse, this one slightly curved so that it’s hard to tell how much further you have to walk to reach the end, all filled with extra electronic audio/visual assaults on one’s already jangled neurons. This place in an architect’s experiment in rapid onset Gruen Transfer. For a brief moment around 2006 it looked like the place was about to die, but in 2014 it’s nearly impossible to find parking space on any day, and that’s after they added two four-storey parking lots!

So, just the Republican intellectuals who are extinct, then?

the middle class.

Tacit support for Baathist dictators
Wars in Iraq

#6 john Quiggin

Two of the projects on that map, with four reactors, are actually under construction, over time and over budget as usual.

Yes. A few new reactors actually under construction, over time and over budget as usual. For a long time there were no new ones at all, and now there are new ones.

The rest are not going to happen – about half have asterisks noting that they have been formally suspended, and the others have been dragging on for years with no actual progress.

I hope you are right. I personally think that possible accidents for nuclear power make traditional corporate liability inappropriate.

Every individual investor in a nuclear power plant should accept full personal liability for any debts, and every investor in a corporation that invests in a nuclear power plant should accept full personal liability for any debts caused by the power plant.

Given safe, cheap,efficient nuclear power, that won’t matter at all and investors should have no concern at the prospect.

#10

Again, I hope your interpretation is right and I think it very well might be.

The Greatest Generation.

US hegemony – thank god, though it’s going to take a few decades and it won’t be pretty …

Republican intellectuals are only extinct because they are redundant. Democratic centrists do enough hippy punching and tortured egghead apologies for business as usual for both parties.

Conservative intellectuals are a contradiction in terms. Their conclusions are fixed in advance and they’re free to choose their premises; any sloppiness in argument is beside the point and generally overlooked. There’s scant reward for originality when innovation is prohibited. Some progress can be detected: Catholics are now part of the club.

Galbraith: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Well, as 64-year-old, I see lots of things disappearing. Like vacant lots in otherwise prosperous suburban areas — not talking Detroit here. (Vacant lots were a mainstay of my youth, from my neighborhood-roaming elementary school years to my adolescent first in making out.) Also, grave yards. Are there new ones being created as space runs out in the old ones? I don’t think so. (We don’t even have ossuaries anymore, do we? I do have my father’s “ashes” in a closet upstairs, and my cousin has our grandmother’s in her closet still…. We both keep meaning to do something about that — otherwise, what will our children or grandchildren think, when they come upon these things when we have died?)

But as the granddaughter of a ceo-engineer responsible for the first nuclear plant in the US and the daughter of someone who advocated for that plant (and as someone who knew both people as, ya know, real people and who can’t imagine either of them today advocating for nuclear energy! they’d be gun-ho solar and wind, such were their motives for advocacy then and such was their sense of adventure into the future), well, everything in parentheses is what I most wanted to say.

According to an article I read recently (don’t remember the source), cemeteries in Israel are going high-rise because of the shortage of land.

Finally, I get it.

We’ll never see the last of any of these things. Shopping malls will be around as long as we drive. Nuclear power plants, or their results, will persist for the rest of our lives. While there are Republicans, there will be some considered intellectuals, either because they don’t drool, or they have beards which contain their saliva. (It works for me.)

I was going to say “self-aware liberals”, but then I read a more recent post…

@ Marcellina: Just two days ago, I learned that the Karstadt in central Stuttgart, where I moved one year ago, will close in 2015. Too bad: recently arrived foreigners searching for pillowcases, Moka pots, and other essentials will have to find these things elsewhere…

Full size 5 seater convertibles
Sensible gun policies
Pro choice/pro union Republicans
Labour music in the Pete Seeger mold

The malls around here were mostly redone in the past 10-20 years. They were probably older than the national average to begin with. Now even the high-end ones that never looked especially shabby are being rebuilt too.

It’s true that the first to go were the tiny ones that, for a while before they decided to make access from the outside only and replace all the retail with food, felt safe only if you were a skateboarder.

“There could be a silent majority of liberals in the USA, but they’re mostly silent.”

I think this would be a very different country indeed if there were a majority of liberals. No, there’s a large faction, but they’re in stealth mode, because being quiet about what they want is the only way to win an election in most of the country. How could their candidates lie about what they’ll do if elected, if they were shouting it from the roof tops?

Upward mobility.

Houses less than 1500 square feet on lots 5000 square feet or less.

“I think this would be a very different country indeed if there were a majority of liberals. No, there’s a large faction, but they’re in stealth mode, because being quiet about what they want is the only way to win an election in most of the country. How could their candidates lie about what they’ll do if elected, if they were shouting it from the roof tops?”

So they’re in hiding, but you’re not fooled. You can spot them. Some kind of libdar.

Brett’s just trolling. A right-winger seriously proposing that “being quiet about what they want is the only way [for liberals] to win an election in most of the country” while simultaneously accusing liberals of a lack of self-awareness? Has to be a joke. Right?

Gay kids growing up, as I did, without knowing there was such a thing as being gay.

One-way mass media, inculcating a dominant national narrative.

Serious investigative “star” reporters, exerting an immediate influence on public opinion and even upon legislation.

“Gay kids growing up, as I did, without knowing there was such a thing as being gay.”

I agree with Lynne, huge.

Glen Tomkins: To be “fair,” medically unnecessary quarantines are to a certain extent inevitable, since as long as policymakers have to decide when to quarantine and when not to, sometimes they’ll err on the side of too much. Doing unnecessary gestures for the sake of political grandstanding on the other hand: that’s more problematic, and yes, that’s not going anywhere anytime soon either.

Because the “and nowhere else” would be a massive violation of the 1st amendment. But I suspect you knew that would be the answer.

JQ, next time you are in Silicon Valley check out Santana Row. This is a kind of high-end shopping mall cum Disneyland cum condo complex. Enormously popular, even among people I would have thought would be appalled by it. The other thing that thrives here is the lowly strip mall, home to the rainbow of striving immigrant shopkeepers and restaurateurs. That is to say, home to where you want to eat out. Send me an email and I’ll buy you lunch.

> Brett’s just trolling.

No, he’s just very, very banal.

‘town centres” (and yeah, they spell it that way often—because it’s quaint or something?)

Well I guess you could call the UK/Australian spelling quaint…

Me? I just call it correct

:)

@js (56):

complete with entirely fake “town centres”

You mean “towne centres”, or even “ye olde towne centres”

@js (58)

Punk Rock.

Ok fine, it’s not archetypically American

I thought the Sex Pistols stole the music from the Ramones, and the fashion stylings from Richard Hell. No?

Elf, #1: Seattle’s Southcenter mall might be an anomaly, belonging (along with one soon to open in NYC) to Australia’s Westfield Group. There’s some evidence that it’s not so exceptional however — its competition, a shopping center (American for an open-air mall) is The Landing, only six miles away, and pretentious Bellevue Square mall is only ten miles further on. For what it’s worth, across the country, the latest U.S. Census’ Statistical Abstract shows over 48,000 “shopping centers” as of 2005.

For things that are vanished in America, I’d suggest:

Cheerful, Bugs Bunny-style insouciance.
Extensive and innovative public works.
Pride in a tradition of political compromise (what I, as a Peace corps Volunteer in Ecuador many years ago, thought was the primary factor that differentiated US politics from the less successful varieties across Latin America).

Well I guess you could call the UK/Australian spelling quaint…

Me? I just call it correct

If I thought the planners/designers/marketers were trying to conform to UK/Australian usage, I wouldn’t call it quaint. I grew up spelling it “centre” myself.

@Kiwanda

That may well be right about punk rock. The Brits just ended up doing it better tho.

Like liberals are honest about ‘voter suppression’. Screaming “voter suppression” over a reduction to 25 days of early voting in N.C., and silent as can be about ZERO days of early voting in N.Y. (To mention just one of the dozen or so ‘blue’ states that don’t have it.) How can it be racist to reduce early voting to nearly a month, and not racist to have none at all?

Try complaining about a lack of early voting someplace where you are in control, and I might take you seriously on that score.

Oh Brett… Could you be anymore of a hack?

Victoria, not any more of a hack than you. Seriously, if it’s racist for N.C. to “only” have 25 days of early voting, explain why it isn’t racist for N.Y. to have zip, zero, nada. None at the polls, absentee ballot for cause only.

If it’s a hardship for blacks to have to vote on one of 25 days in N.C., why isn’t only being able to vote on ONE day a hardship in New York? In Rhode Island? Connecticut? New Hampshire? Delaware? Massachusetts?

It’s not a hardship, because ‘voting rights’ activists are Democratic party activists, and they only get concerned about ‘voting rights’ where the interests of the Democratic party are at stake.

I don’t think voter ID, however minor an imposition it may be, is the most effective way to go after vote fraud. Everybody knows that absentee ballots are where the real action is. But the opposition to voter ID is remarkably hypocritical.

Oh, so if you have a bit better history, you’re free to impose vastly greater racist burdens? Racial discrimination is ok in ‘blue’ states? This is a pathetic excuse for having a double standard. That’s all.

@68

My daughter reported from kindergarten that one of her classmates pretended his graham cracker was a phone, rather than the more traditional banana.

gianni, please stop feeding the troll. It’s obvious that Brett Bellmore isn’t having a good faith conversation.

I hesitate even to extend this conversation, but just by searching for “new york early voting” I found that there is a move to adopt it, but—as will surprise no one who’s ever lived in New York—it’s languishing under Albany’s three-leaders model. Cuomo and Shelly Silver are on board, but somehow the Republican leadership in the Senate are declining to support it.

As for the other listed blue states, they all exceed the national voting rate of 61.8% (these are all from the Census website, specifically voting percentage of citizens): Conn. 62.7%, Del. 67.3%, Mass. 70.8%, N.H. 69.4%, R.I. 62.5%. There are plenty of southern states with great voter participation rates, too—North Carolina and Mississippi, for instance—and plenty of southern states with lousy ones—Texas, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Among blue states? just California and New York (each a big state where Republicans have controlled some aspect of state government recently), and then Hawaii, for reasons I’m guessing have something to do peculiar with that unique state that his haolie just knows nothing about. It is true that low voter participation isn’t a problem with the Deep South so much as with Appalachia and the Sun Belt; it’s not at all the case that it’s a problem with blue states as much as with red states.

But yes, gianni, the legacy of Jim Crow racial voting restrictions is an obvious distinguishing factor that no honest conversant would overlook. You are precisely right on that.

Anti-consumerism
Hydro power
Democratic Party intellectuals

“I also cannot tell whether you are contending that both NC and NY have problematic voting laws, or if only NY does, or that neither do and the entire issue is irrelevant and a distraction created by democratic party elites. ”

I am contending that, if 25 days of early voting is so grossly inadequate as to constitute “voter suppression” in N.C., then zero days of early voting cannot, logically, fail to constitute worse voter suppression. And yet, which are you making the noise about?

What makes me a troll?

On this particular issue, if Pat is right the GOP is acting to make it harder to vote in NY and in NC both, but in NC they are actively making it worse than it was before.

You argue that we ought to pay more attention to NY where it’s worse, relative to NC where it’s getting worse.

Your point is that NY is a blue state where it’s bad, but not that NY is a blue state where the GOP makes it bad. As a troll, you want to blame the bad conditions on NY on liberals or something.

It’s perfectly understandable that you can’t understand this is trollish, because you are a troll and it is not in your interest to understand that you are a troll.

I think neither side is motivated by any principle higher than, “What is to my immediate advantage?”, and just want to puncture your pretense to the contrary.

I think there is some truth to that. NY is a blue state and so the GOP can only marginally hurt them. There are not big gains from improving voting there.

NC is a swing state and there are potentially big gains to the GOP by increasing voter suppression there, so everybody who’s against the GOP has reason to try to stop them.

Yes, it’s true, people who care about winning try to act tactically so they can win more.

Where are the principled idealists who try for the fairest methods in every case regardless who wins? Shouldn’t they be running the whole system and making it all fair? Why aren’t they in charge?

Echo answers mournfully.

He doesn’t necessarily think the conditions in NY or in NC are bad. He’s merely pointing out to the double-standard: accusing the NC conservatives of racism, based on the conditions in conservative NC – where the conditions that are, in fact, far superior (by the accuser’s criteria) to the conditions in liberal NY. A perfectly fine argument.

But he never responded to the claim that it was the GOP which kept the conditions (by the other guy’s criteria) bad in NY.

So the place where the bad guys succeed in blocking voting — but still tend to lose, except in enough districts to keep their veto power — would not be as important as the place where they are on the edge of losing but are making things worse.

No hypocrisy there on the part of Democrats.

Brett Bellmore is sadly misinformed about early voting in NC. The NCGOP initiated a number of voting reforms – voter ID, no more same day voter registration, among them. In terms of early voting, NCGOP cut a week off the early voting window – NC residents have 10 days of early voting, rather than 17 as before. Not sure where Brett gets his “25 days” info – but it is wrong.

Colin Powell blasted NCGOP for doing this – why make it harder to vote? http://politi.co/1kBlzPh

An NCGOP official noted on The Daily Show that there was a specific reason for making changes to the voter laws – to make it harder for left-leaning voters to vote. Here’s that Daily Show clip – it’s quite a showcase for current NCGOP political thinking: http://bit.ly/1dovzw7

Differing opinions are valuable. Please prop them up with facts, Brett…

Is there a struggle over voting rules in MA we haven’t heard about? Is one party attempting to impose more restrictions on voting, for electoral gain, as the Republicans are in NC? If not, then there is no basis for comparing the actions of actors, and comparing the actions of actors to anything else is deceptive nonsense.

Should there be more expansive voting conditions everywhere? Yes, of course. Are Democrats preventing it anywhere? Not so I’ve heard. Is there an effort to impose more restrictions on voting? Yes, there is. Who’s making that effort? Republicans are.

BB’s nonsense is just nonsense.

“Layman, if Democrats control a state, and it does not have early voting, then, unavoidably, Democrats are preventing it there. Because it isn’t there, and nobody else could be responsible.”

I think you’ll find that ‘control’ isn’t what you think it is (in particular WRT your chosen example, NY); and your notion that any state of affairs, anywhere, reflects the conscious will of legislators, won’t stand up to much scrutiny. In fact, I predict you’ll abandon it quite quickly, when it is turned against you…

84 “Many apologists for the Soviet Union on the left seemed to have morphed into apologists for Putin.”

Why would Putin need apologists? He was elected in 2012 with 64% of the vote, with the Communist leader coming remote second, at 17%. He’s been very popular and successful; he seems to be, in many respects, a Russian equivalent of FDR, and just as hated by various elites inside and outside the country. Apologists for a politician thrice elected and with the approval rating of (currently) 84%?

Well, I never got asked for ID when I was voting in Michigan, but my high school bus driver was one of the poll workers, knew me by name. It was a small town. I certainly need to provide ID here in South Carolina.

And why in the world should anyone object to being fingerprinted and photographed as an alternative to showing ID, to vote? If the objective is to prevent impersonation vote fraud, it would do the job, and only somebody who was illegally voting would object to doing it.

Yeah, no doubt Republicans obstructed it. So, sue N.Y. in court. If not having enough early voting is a form of racist vote suppression, never having had it in New York ought to be enough to establish a continuing pattern of racist vote suppression. You could get New York into preclearance!

Brett,

You have not yet responded to the contention I made in the second half of the second paragraph of 76, which answers your question as to why a focus on NC over NY is fitting, because one is a change in the status quo of high black voting turnout, whereas NY has not exhibited any changes, [or even is exhibiting moves in the opposite direction, as Pat has shown, demonstrating that liberals in NY do care about this issue there but are being stalled by the Republican Party].

Please feel free to respond at your leisure.

Ze Kraggash, @92

Mass. politics at the state level are not as you assume them to be. Mass sent Scott Brown to Washington, put Romney in the governship, and has plenty of republicans in the state senate who can get their way despite being a minority in ways similar to how the minority can run the senate in washington.

But ultimately, all of this is a distraction from the actual issue. The voting behavior of other states is a side issue to the recent changes enacted in NC. North Carolina, in the 2008 and 2012 elections, became one of the leading states in the nation as regards minority turn out. This is a good thing for fans of democracy, but also meant that when NC went blue in 2008 it scared a lot of established republicans in the state. So they went about changing it.

Rather than diverting a conversation about recent changes to the status quo voting procedures in NC into a conversation about other states with substantially fewer changes on their immediate horizon, we should remain focused on the areas where the issues are live. If you think we should be up in arms about NY and Mass, sure, let us be enraged… but we should focus on NC first, as that is where the issues are most pressing and where the popular energy is at its highest.

Someone gave me an opening to go self centered off topic (that is off country): The malls. Malls are less out of date than inner city department stores. But the big outside town mall is also pretty out of date. The new malls in Europe have both public transport access and car access. Plus, really they are just a handfull built on cheap money, mainly at tourism hot spots. As for the US ones, im going to bet against outright extinction.

“You have not yet responded to the contention I made”

Nah, actually I did. See #86. A response doesn’t have to make you happy, to be a response.

“He’s pretty good at that. I think part of it is coming up with an argument which is so obviously flawed that people are sure they can out-argue it.”

No, that’s not it.

See, liberals like to think that you’re rational, that people who disagree with you about just about anything are nutcases. “What’s The Matter with Kansas?” But the truth is that you’re members of the same species as conservatives, just partially evolved apes, capable of reason, sure, but not using it as a default, let alone exclusive, mode. You’ve got your typical cognitive failures, crazy premises you’re too fond of to abandon, irrational quirks. You’re human.

But your self-image is bound up on NOT being as irrational as conservatives. You look in the mirror, you see Vulcans, maybe even Arisians. You don’t see the chimp. Your self-image is thus fundamentally false, but it is what it is.

So I wait for one of those typical liberal irrational prejudices, (Of which you have plenty, but being YOUR irrational prejudices, you have difficulty identifying them. I, having *different* prejudices, have no trouble. Wonder which ones we share, and can’t either of us identify?) to exhibit itself, and strike. I make a reasoned argument demonstrating to you that you’re being irrational.

You ARE capable of reason, of course, and like to think of yourselves as reasonable people, so the argument strikes home. But it also conflicts with a deeply held irrational prejudice, which can’t be easily abandoned. The cognitive dissonance burns. You have to respond, like somebody scratching an itch. The deeply held prejudice has to be defended!

I like to think of myself as providing a service. After all, every time you are forced to confront some point on which you’re being irrational, be it warmists rejecting nuclear power, or obsessing about how vote suppressive 25 days of early voting is, while not caring about zero, there’s at least SOME chance you’ll bust down that mental wall, and become marginally more rational in reality.

You probably think of me more as the mental equivalent of poison ivy, all pain, no gain. Well, there isn’t a lot of gain, you’re pretty devoted to those prejudices. But one thing I’m not is a “troll”, because I never argue a point I don’t believe. At least not without saying something like, “for the sake of argument”.

Claims of vote suppression, like claims of vote fraud, are, as Ze points out, a partisan rallying cry. Because that’s what they are, the putative efforts to fight both are never directed where the real problems are, like no early voting in N.Y., or absentee ballots instead of in person fraud. They’re a subject where those weak points I attack are particularly dense, because you really, really like to think your side plays clean, and the other side are the KKK in Brooks Brother’s suits.

Which is really hilarious, and that hilarity is really what keeps me coming back.

You think it’s reasonable to go after N.C. for only having 25 days of early voting, because it’s such a racist plot ot suppress voting, but to leave N.Y. with no early voting alone, because that’s innocent. And you think I’m the one who’s irrational.

Um, it should be no later than 7 days before, not after, the election.

Has no one noticed that Ze is at least a big a troll as Brett?

“voting officials in 27 states, almost all of them Republicans, have launched what is threatening to become a massive purge of black, Hispanic, and Asian-American voters. Already, tens of thousands have been removed from voter rolls in battleground states, and the numbers are set to climb.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/10/al_jazeera_america_s_reveals_massive_gop_voter_suppression_effort_millions.html

If the only way you can win is to suppress the vote maybe it is time to take a hard look at your policies?

“And why in the world should anyone object to being fingerprinted and photographed as an alternative to showing ID, to vote? If the objective is to prevent impersonation vote fraud, it would do the job, and only somebody who was illegally voting would object to doing it.”

Except, there is essentially no impersonation, in-person voter fraud, so no problem to be solved; and of course, we shouldn’t worry at all that the Big Scary Intrusive Government might build a database of fingerprints & photos and use them to some improper purpose.

Your suggestion is actually funny, given the very likely conservative and libertarian fury if a Democrat was so naive as to propose it. I can picture the attack ads now…

Republican officials have actually admitted that they are trying to keep minorities and young people from voting. You should be ashamed of yourself for supporting them.

What I want you to notice about this, is that Republicans don’t think that is anything to be ashamed of. That’s why they come out and say it.

You think they ought to be ashamed. You tell them to be ashamed. But they are not ashamed.

Many independent voters are not outraged by this, unless it hurts them personally. It might be worth understanding how that can be.

Meanwhile, here is a bigger bottom line. In the USA, pretty much everybody who is paying attention is disgusted by the GOP now. And at the same time, they are likely to win more elections next week. The reason is that a whole lot of people don’t think that the Democratic Party is any improvement. Somebody ought to think carefully about that too.

“Well, J, you’re not ashamed about wanting to maximize the number of lazy people voting out of complete ignorance, and that’s pretty despicable, too. A lot of people find THAT disgusting.”

Yes, it’s all about the blah people, as Santorum so eloquently put it.

“And at the same time, they are likely to win more elections next week. The reason is that a whole lot of people don’t think that the Democratic Party is any improvement. ”

This totally ignores the structural imbalance favoring Republican candidates.

#121 Layman

“And at the same time, they are likely to win more elections next week. The reason is that a whole lot of people don’t think that the Democratic Party is any improvement. “

This totally ignores the structural imbalance favoring Republican candidates.

That’s true. There isn’t really just one reason. I think the reason I said is important enough to deserve careful thought.

#120 MPAVictoria

This is because we do not have a fair and independent media.

Yes, that’s certainly part of it. When I went to college my roommate was the nephew of the woman who ran both newspapers in that town. One was a “liberal” newspaper and the other was “conservative”. He said she was very very conservative but she wanted a paper to sell to liberals. Now they have one newspaper, extreme conservative. That’s who they sell newspapers to now. There’s an online newspaper that doesn’t do a lot of politics, and is only moderately conservative (by US standards) when they do. Maybe part of the reason is that newspapers are just not making that much money any more, so they don’t try to sell to niche markets.

Talk radio could get more people listening if they had more variety, but it seems they don’t care about a bigger audience to attract more advertising.

But I don’t think it’s true that all that many Americans are mindless sheep who believe whatever the media tell them. There’s some of that, but there’s more going on too.

Well, J, you’re not ashamed about wanting to maximize the number of lazy people voting out of complete ignorance, and that’s pretty despicable, too.

Lazy? How do you know this? Is lazy the same as feeling discouraged about disenfranchisement? And are Fox News viewers well informed???

Now you think the Democratic party has to fight a media headwind, in a country where almost all of the news media are Democrats.

Setting aside right-wing propaganda organs like Fox News whose job it is to actively misinform people in the service of the GOP, our mainstream news media is a) not necessarily owned by Democrats overall and b) are giant, for-profit corporations whose inherent bias is not necessarily political as much as economic. News and information that might undermine the economic status of the elite in this country is systematically underreported and underemphasized. That is the bias in our mainstream media.

Also, Scouts honor, Brett. Is that you posting as “Yama”?

>Takes a tougher neighborhood than this before I don’t use my real name.

‘Beaverbrook replied: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.”’

“but there’s no structural imbalance favoring Republican Senate candidates”

Yes there is. The states that are having senatorial elections this time around are typically very conservative states.

@129
“Yes there is. The states that are having senatorial elections this time around are typically very conservative states.”

Come on now, that doesn’t make sense. 36 states are holding Senate elections and 21 of these seats are presently occupied by Democrats….its obviously not true that these aren’t especially conservative states or there wouldn’t already be a plurality that have Democrat occupants.

You might prefer to go with the argument that there is an unusually large contested portion that are Democrat held, that would be true, but that’s not a “structural” issue.

Layman – your point at 130 is reasonable from the perspective of the weakness of having a Senate in the first place, but that’s not really an issue on the table is it?

“but there’s no structural imbalance favoring Republican Senate candidates”

Yes there is. The states that are having senatorial elections this time around are typically very conservative states.

If they switch from Democrat to GOP this year, it’s because the Democrats won there last time around. For the GOP to win them back, the level of relative disgust must have changed.

I’m not saying that the Democrats on average are actually as bad as the GOP. Just, a lot of voters think so. For myself, I’m voting Democrat. I like my Senator. He mostly says things I agree with. He made no progress on any of those issues over the last 6 years, so he’s saying the same things now he said last time around, but that’s better than him wanting something else. He kind of disagrees with me on a lot of foreign policy, but this state has a whole lot of veterans and he can’t win if they turn against him. He’s 100% zionist, but he couldn’t win if he wasn’t. He’s said some stupid things about the economy, but my state’s voters sure wouldn’t elect him if he told the truth about that. I don’t know what he believes, likely as not he believes the stuff he puts out, but you can’t have everything.

He kind of reminds me of Nixon. I voted for Nixon in 1972, he was going to arrange an honorable end to the war. I’d probably vote for this guy even if there wasn’t a Republican running, unless there was a candidate who had some ideas.

Brett,

“Which is really hilarious, and that hilarity is really what keeps me coming back.”

Sigh. How could anyone possibly take you for a troll?

“See? Hilarity. Now you think the Democratic party has to fight a media headwind, in a country where almost all of the news media are Democrats.”

Hmm. A quick Wikipedia scan yields one interesting reference ( perhaps not an authoritative source, but I’m feeling lazy):
A 2000 meta-analysis of research in 59 quantitative studies of media bias in American presidential campaigns from 1948 through 1996 found that media bias tends to cancel out, leaving little or no net bias. The authors conclude “It is clear that the major source of bias charges is the individual perceptions of media consumers and, in particular, media consumers of a particularly ideological bent.”
Has this changed greatly over the last couple of administrations? I certainly haven’t gotten that impression…

I suspect my politics are a lot closer to yours than most on this site – but you show distressing tendencies to dodge questions (particularly whys or hows), give unsupported opinions as facts, and ignore the occasional bit of inconvenient history. (Lord knows you’re not the only one here, but – those trying to shift consensus must be more convincing than the crowd arguing against them. And if you’re not actually interested in the arguments you spark, well, that is the definition of troll.)

MPAVictoria:
Has no one noticed that Ze is at least as big a troll as Brett?

I almost (almost, not quite) preferred Ze Kraggash in his prior incarnations as Data Tutashkia and that long string of other pseudonyms (or blog names) that I’ve mostly forgotten (perhaps due to a combination of cognitive overload and a tendency to dump useless info). But this time Ze is avoiding the more blatantly outrageous behavior that got him banned under the last pseudonym, while still managing to produce hymns to that paragon of justice, peace, and democracy, Vladimir Putin (followed by Lukashenko as a close second).

@134
I think I understand your point Layman, what I fail to understand is how that’s a structurally favors Republicans in Senate elections. The strategy has been as you say ever since 2006 yet in none of those years did it make a difference, now, all of a sudden when there’s a chance the Senate will flip its suddently some structural problem?

To be clear I agree fully your point that composition of the senate is not a direct referendum on Democratic party popularity….I just don’t buy the rest of the premise that this is somehow of some structural benefit to Republicans.

135 “And if you’re not actually interested in the arguments you spark, well, that is the definition of troll.”

Hey, let’s be fair now: what he sparked is a long string of insults and denunciations, not arguments.

So J and Joe your argument is that every state has an equal chance of going democratic or republican in a senate race? That is a very weird claim. It is not a controversial claim to say that the democrats face a very shitty map this time around.

“Hey, let’s be fair now: what he sparked is a long string of insults and denunciations, not arguments”

May I direct you to:
74
91
98
101
113

Of course you are engaged in a long running performance art piece so I don’t really expect a response.

“It wasn’t a structural issue 6 years ago when they won the seats and won’t be if they lose them….”

Structure is not necessarily determinative. It is a factor, but not the only one. Six years ago saw the largest financial crisis in 3 generations, with voters facing the prospect or reality of bankruptcy, eviction, and unemployment. It also coincided with a presidential election, and served in part as a referendum on the outgoing president and his parties’ performance in two bungled wars and the economy. The result? Democrats won some Senate seats they would not otherwise ordinarily win, in red states where some voters held their noses and voted for Democrats (or didn’t vote at all) in protest.

All of which is beside the point. Please go back and re-read the thread. I’m saying that a loss of the Senate in this particular election, on it’s own, cannot be used as evidence that voters in general feel Democrats are no better than Republicans, because in this particular election many of the seats up for grabs are in states where those voters who prefer Republicans outnumber those who prefer Democrats; while overall, in all the states, voters prefer Democrats over Republicans, and Democrats will likely get more votes in total.

So J and Joe your argument is that every state has an equal chance of going democratic or republican in a senate race?

No. I’m saying that if *you* say that they’re at a disadvantage because they have 3 extra seats more than the average so it’s in the cards they’ll lose some, then *you* are implicitly saying that they have no better than a 50% chance.

Wait a second. Is there actually confusion here as to why Democrats do better in a Presidential years as opposed to off years?

I’m asking somebody to come out and say what’s going on.

I’ll do it myself. Six years ago it wasn’t just a presidential election, also the whole country was disgusted at Bush and the Republicans. Even most Republican voters were disgusted at the GOP.

But since then they’ve had 6 years to repair the damage. They tell themselves that Bush wasn’t really a Republican, he was really some kind of liberal and somehow it took them 8 years to notice. But now the GOP isn’t like that, now they’re real Republicans who spout Tea Party slogans. They say they’ve reformed, and if they win Congress and the presidency we’ll find out.

So the choice is between Obama — Bush-Lite, versus the liars who say to ignore what they were like before, now they’ll be something different.

Obama and his congress had 2 years to campaign. They could have campaigned against the GOP, and talked up all the great things they intended to do that the GOP would try to stop them, and try to win bigger in 2010. Instead they talked about compromise and bipartisanship and did basicly nothing except Obamacare. In 2010 they lost the chance to do anything and we’ve been on hold ever since, without even much talk about what they’d do if they could. And so now they might lose the Senate too.

The Obama plan for elections is to put a big effort into getting out the vote. They get volunteers to identify people who are sure to vote Democrat, and work hard at getting them to the polls. There is no effort to persuade independents to vote Democrat, just as well if independents don’t vote. If there aren’t enough fervent Democrats in some area to win, they write off that area. This is a workable strategy when the opposition is disgusting Republicans that nobody in their right mind would vote for anyway. But when their own support dwindles, because they don’t have anything going for them except they aren’t as bad as the GOP, then it stops working.

Maybe in 2 years I might be ready to vote GOP myself. A crazy plan might have some sort of chance. It’s hard to vote for no plan at all.

@149 Which isn’t to say some of your observations aren’t important. You’re totally right. Bush was a sinking ship at the end and so his voters were dispirited and less likely to come out to vote for McCain.

@149 If anybody cares for the view from people who actually run in elections…

Almost no one has a vote that can be changed or even influenced. Elections are (at least for the experts from two victorious Obama campaigns) about finding people inclined to vote for you and getting those people to vote.

Yes, I know that’s the Obama campaign doctrine. It has worked adequately in the short run. Obama won two presidential elections with it, and it has produced the current congressional victories.

Those polls where there are lots of undecided voters? Probably undecided voters will simply never decide and never vote. Or they are lying, they’ve already made up their minds but they’re pretending to be undecided. There’s nothing you can do to influence them, nothing at all. The experts know what they’re talking about, look how great the Democratic party is doing at elections!

OK, I shouldn’t be so sarcastic. There’s a context where it makes sense. If somebody knocks on my door and it’s a political campaign volunteer, it’s unlikely that there’s anything they can say that will get me to change my mind. If Brett Bellmore knocks on my door and starts telling me all the reasons I should vote GOP, he will probably fail. I have too much experience. If I see a GOP candidate who looks good, I know from experience that on every issue the GOP actually takes a stand on, he will vote with the party because they have great party discipline. So no matter how I like him, I don’t really get to vote for him. He is not a free man.

Democrats can’t expect campaign workers to change anybody’s mind either. It makes sense for them to work only on getting supporters to the polls.

But in the bigger picture, they need to work on creating more Democrats if they want to keep winning. One part of that is they really ought to stand for something. Of course every time they take a stand on an issue then people who are on the other side of that issue will tend to go GOP. So it’s safest to not stand for anything in particular and just be against whatever the GOP is for, except for popular things that almost everybody is for. But to keep going it takes a certain amount of volunteers and voters who actually care, and they’re in some danger of running out.

Good grief. Obama may be Bush-Lite to you, but to the voters you’re talking about, he’s a Marxist Kenyan Muslim.

That’s not necessarily a contradiction. I have the poor self discipline to occasionally read some nuttier blogs, and for many of the people who think Obama is a Marxist Kenyan Muslim, GWB has been retro-converted to a socialist peacenik RINO. Likewise for McCain and Romney. If you’re not saying things crazy and hateful enough to alienate 70% of the country, you’re too soft for the wingnuts. But the wingnuts don’t actually make up much of the electorate. They lie to each other that their Republican candidates lost because they weren’t far right enough.

I did work in a minor capacity for the Howard Dean campaign a decade ago. Nonetheless, I hope to never delude myself that voter rejection of center-left candidates means Americans are secretly longing for far left candidates. This is a pretty conservative nation, and I’m trying to shift that in my small way without fooling myself.

Most politically engaged people, left and right, probably would have liked to see aggressive prosecution of financial companies and executives in the wake of the 2008 meltdown. They don’t seem loved among any significant bloc of voters. But that appears to be out of bounds in Washington, DC.

@153 I imagine when my wife lands later tonight in Miami to fight out the last week in a toss-up district, she’ll run into one or two people that know the Democratic Party stands for something.

Good grief. Obama may be Bush-Lite to you, but to the voters you’re talking about, he’s a Marxist Kenyan Muslim.

Those aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/166763/record-high-americans-identify-independents.aspx

This isn’t the newest data, but I don’t expect big changes. 31% identified as Democrat, 25% said they were Republican, 42% called themselves Independent.

It’s Democrats and Independents that I’m concerned see Obamat/etc as Bush-Lite. Some of them will bother to vote when the alternative is an insane Republican, but it could be a lot better.

Brett Bellmore 10.29.14 at 10:01 am:

Claims of vote suppression, like claims of vote fraud, are, as Ze points out, a partisan rallying cry.

Here, Bellmore appears to be claiming that NJ Gov. Chris Christie, GA Sen. Fran Millar, Columbus County OH GOP Chair Doug Preis, TX former-Atty.-Gen’l and current-gubernatorial-candidate Greg Abbott and NC GOP Precinct Chair Don Yelton are either:
(1) Attempting to rally Liberals, or
(2) Trolling by making outrageous and obtuse statements
…when, for example, they openly state intent to make voting more difficult for, those who attend “African-American mega churches”, “urban – read African-American – voter[s]” and “lazy blacks”.

NB – Yelton, after neglecting to use dog-whistle terms, was asked to resign.

But one thing I’m not is a “troll”, because I never argue a point I don’t believe. At least not without saying something like, “for the sake of argument”.

So, arguing-for-the-sake-of-argument is trollish, but with a religious exception? If these are unwavering beliefs, have we redefined “argument” so it can include bludgeoning others with one’s own universe of “truths”, without listening to the reply or responding to questions posed? Soon, I expect argument will be reduced to just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.

When it comes to voting – to get back to the derailed topic – the issue is ballot access, and there are various methods for solving problems (just as there are various methods of creating problems). Ballot access can be suppressed by, e.g., making voters travel long distances or wait in line a long time or pass an ad-hoc exam or go through a lengthy, multi-step process to obtain a form of ID that they have never needed for anything else.

I am flabbergasted to learn from Bellmore

…that New York is suppressing the votes of people who tend to vote for Democratic Party candidates. No wonder Democrats hold only 99 of the 150 seats in the Assembly and 32 of the 63 seats in the Senate.

If everyone’s voting experience were the typical/average US-white-voter experience, in which one begins the process of voting within 15 minutes after arriving at the polling place, expanding the time window for voting would have a small effect. But, in mostly-black or -latino precincts in former-preclearance states, those who complete voting on election day often wait multiple hours, while many others give up and leave without voting. [Mission Accomplished, Republicans.]

As far as “what’s-good-for-NC-is-good-for-NY”, if Bellmore has any chance of getting cancer, I think he needs to start the chemotherapy now. Next, irradiation. Otherwise, he is receiving less care than people who already have cancer – and look at what their lives have become!

Or, maybe, the application of some therapies is useful when indicated by diagnoses, not so helpful otherwise. Maybe, someday, “conservatives” will argue against the federal government blindly applying the same fix to every state, and begin to espouse local solutions to local problems.

I’m deep enough in the pig slop, I may as well:

You probably think of me more as the mental equivalent of poison ivy…

Did you mean to use the word “equal”?

@J Thomas
And, think about it. President John McCain. I’d say, November 1, 2014: Dead Ukrainians 50,000. Dead Americans in Ukraine: 1,000.

“if Bellmore has any chance of getting cancer, I think he needs to start the chemotherapy now. ”

That was back in 2010, when I had the great fortune to come down with prostate cancer AND lymphoma at the same time. And by “great fortune”, I’m perfectly serious, because the prostate cancer was easily detected, and the pre-operative physical for the prostate surgery picked up the lymphoma early enough to be treatable. Without the prostate cancer, I likely would be several years dead of lymphoma, it was a very aggressive cancer with a lousy survival rate unless detected stage 1.

I was also fortunate in that I still had at that time my pre-ACA insurance, which paid the price of a nice house for the treatment. My post-ACA insurance is, of course, much worse, aside from covering the birth control I don’t need anymore.

On chemo, if you ever need it, and can get a port, do so. I lost every vein they used for the IV.

” It looks to me like Obama’s crowning achievement has been to not order a large military attack on Iran.”

I thought it was inventing the term “kinetic action” to explain why he was violating the war powers act. From that day forward, the US would no longer wage wars, only “kinetic actions”.

Politicians who feel obliged to acknowledge the constitution as a limit on their own power
Partisans who don’t get worked up into fake outrage
Reasonable discussion about immigration policy

Brett Bellmore 10.30.14 at 9:58 am:

I was also fortunate in that I still had at that time my pre-ACA insurance, which paid the price of a nice house for the treatment. My post-ACA insurance is, of course, much worse, aside from covering the birth control I don’t need anymore.

On chemo, if you ever need it, and can get a port, do so. I lost every vein they used for the IV.

Ten years ago, my wife paid for her PICC line, because the healthcare plan decided it was not medically necessary – ruining veins is a lot cheaper. This year, my sister had her port-a-cath covered – thanks to Obamacare. (She was diagnosed before her husband got the job that provides healthcare coverage, so she really has a reason to thank The Heritage Foundation and Gov. Mitt Romney for laying the groundwork for Obamacare.)

I, too, would like to know how your insurance is worse under ACA.

Life-threatening circumstances made each of them more politically-minded than they had been. My wife finally registered to vote (although she says Dubya was the reason), and my sister now decides for herself (rather than just go with her husband’s choices).

On topic: Maybe the US has seen the last of healthcare denials based on pre-existing conditions….

Quality Cheap Pots and Pans
We have an old set of Revere ware; new pots and pans are to heavy (heavy taken as a sign of quality) and the handles are metal, and to narrow – it is hard to keep the pan from tipping, as you can’t exert enough torque on the handle

Chinese laundrys that don’t break the buttons on your dress shirts.

Shop keepers who care, at all, about their street
Most mornings, I get a coffee and muffin , place run by a Bulgarian woman and a Guatemalan guy Next door, convenience store run by an yankee; next door a dry cleaner run by a Paki . In front of the stores , a sidewalk *littered* with cigarette butts; I talked to all 3 – they hate it – yet they have not bestirred them selves to buy an ashcan ?? (the paki at least hoses off the sidewalk)

Childrens playground with decent swings; all the new swings are to short and no fun