Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

okay

i can see both sides. on one hand short-term i'd rather have someone who caucuses with the Democrats 50% of the time over the person who caucuses with the Democrats 0% of the time. on the other hand ideological purity could mean short-term someone who will never caucus with Democrats but longterm someone who caucuses 100% of the time (not to even get into fringe benefits of having clarity about what your party stands for + stuff like that).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Dogs.svg

that's the map of the blue dawg caucus in 2009, before the great slaughter. most of those places (southern and/or rural) aren't going to send a 100%er anytime in the next 20 years

i know that this discussion has been had before ... and once upon a time, iatee, i would've argued yer point. but that was before watching the Blue Dogs work their, um, blue magic, and more often than not the results worked out the same as they would've had there been a bona fide Republican.

well, you got what you wished for I guess

we sure showed that budget

most of those places (southern and/or rural) aren't going to send a 100%er anytime in the next 20 years

oh, you don't know that, at all. this is just your ideology talking.

we can all agree blue dogs are scumbags?

no idea why aero thinks the deep south is gonna get all librul anytime soon

we can all agree blue dogs are scumbags?

not really. There was once a place for'em. Now I can think of a few places I'd like to stick them.

oh cool this argument

lol

BEATLES OR STONES

AND WHY

no idea why aero thinks the deep south is gonna get all librul anytime soon

because I live here & actually know what it's like?

(realistically of course it's not going to get "all liberal," any more than the west is)

idgi

hell in 1932 we thought the Solid South would stay solid.

because I live here & actually know what it's like?

Dude...no. You live in one part of it, one kind of it. I live in another, see different stuff, where not even the college towns can muster up enough progressive support to do any real good.

it may have switched parties, but the economic interests of the south have not really changed much since then

xp

regional economic interests just swapped parties in the 20th century. we've been over this.

also I don't get how the west (I'm assuming aero means CA, but also maybe WA and OR?) is not "all liberal". In many ways it's much more liberal than huge swathes of the country.

well there are many rural parts of the west so sometimes it's important to highlight the rural/urban divide more than the blue state red state thing, otherwise you will get people saying "most of california is conservative!!" as if it were some truth bomb

west coast != "the west"

From about 50-75 miles inland from the population centers, CA flips to solid red.

oh cool this argument

From about 50-75 miles inland from the population centers, CA flips to solid red.

"population centers" being the key part of your post

unpopulated areas don't vote fwiw

aaaaaanyway - Walker recall election in less than 90 days

Dude...no. You live in one part of it, one kind of it. I live in another, see different stuff, where not even the college towns can muster up enough progressive support to do any real good.

this is true, I'm in a pretty rad bubble & you're way down there. it's true that population centers tend to get more progressive and as things get sparer less so - Birmingham's is fun & cool but I wouldn't wanna live elsewhere down there. MS/AL is basically what Shakey means by "the south" I figure & it's true that its voting patterns are pretty consistant. btw Shakey Mo which was the state that spearheaded all the gay marriage legislation that's finally making its way down here? was it MS? AL? GA? memory fuckin w/me here

massachusetts

loooool is that actually true, was there an MA prop 22/prop 8 that preceded California?

prop 8's been struck down fyi and was financed by out-of-state interests as I'm sure yr aware

it wasn't voted for by out-of-state interests dude, be real w/yourself

things started judicially in MN in 1972

looks like legislatively, things really started in Alaska and Hawaii back in 1998

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States#Timeline_of_major_events

http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=15576

Six months after gay and lesbian couples began legally marring in Massachusetts, opponents of same-sex marriage swept Election Day, with voters in 11 states approving constitutional amendments codifying marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution.

The amendments won in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Utah and even Oregon the one state where gay rights activists had hoped to prevail.

so step the fuck off with that shit

http://andrewgelman.com/2009/06/gay_marriage_a/

what's interesting is actually how reliably places have been fitting the model of which states we'd expect to pass gay marriage

like it's really one of the best issues to isolate the difference between massachusetts and alabama, so, I mean

what's interesting is actually how reliably places have been fitting the model of which states we'd expect to pass gay marriage

legislatively yes! if/when the issue goes to the polls it's a different picture though, right. or not right?

no, the model is based on voters opinions on the subject

lol the voters of CA (twice!) expressed their opinion about it where it actually had consequences & the results were odious!

prop 8 was mostly a timing thing, it was a tad too soon, 4 years later californians have already shifted enough that it wouldn't pass. also old people die.

tend to agree w/you there but it passed in CA twice, once as Prop 22 and again as Prop 8. while your "population density tends to equal greater tolerance" model has some pith to it I think it vastly, vastly overstates the general decency of, y'know, people.

right, but it passed with a large margin in 2000 and a fairly small margin in 2008, it has nothing to do with 'decency of people', its just old people dying and people softening on the issue

anyway just read the article I linked, I have to go

idk man I see the appeal of the "younger people will be more liberal" model, I know a lot of people who subscribe to it & I'm sure there are charts aplenty but put the "right" kind of conservatism in front of young people and they become young Reagan Republicans, I'm a good deal less optimistic about the "history's tending this way" model

no there is also evidence that, contrary to popular belief, people tend to stick w/ the ideology they had at 24 or w/e. but in any case, gay marriage is pretty much the perfect case study of 'history's tending this way", like it is doing so in an incredibly predictably manner.

predictable*

well, I'll drink to that, we're working hard to defeat an amendment here in NC, we'll see what happens