a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

if it's any help that colin woodard book is pretty good and beanbag's grasp of it is about as strong as you'd expect

― balls, Tuesday, October 6, 2015 12:42 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hell of a lot stronger than the ahistorical ballshit you've posted all over this thread

oh sorry "counterfactual"

"btw, I took the pew typology quiz in benbbag's link and, typically for me, was quite irritated by the phrasing of most of the choices, which frequently used loaded words and were hopelessly stripped of any kind of nuance. the result, predictably, placed me as a solid liberal, which is fair enough stereotyping in my case, but the quiz itself accurately reflects the poverty and oversimplification of political discourse in the USA and left me quite dissatisfied."

agreed. i find the quiz (which i'm not sure isn't a short form) untakeable, but they've been doing this for 30 years - i read the contemporaneous version in the mid-80s - and if it's an impoverished political culture, the typology fits.

the vast majority of us here, myself included, are "solid liberals", my obvious implication being that that may not be enough to win a democratic primary let alone a national election

huh? no, appalachia is the region of the country in or near the appalachian mountain range. i know lots of people from tennessee, kentucky, and arkansas and i'm fairly certain 99% of them would agree w/ me on this.

the word you may be looking for is "hillbilly."

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 12:16 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we aren't talking about music. i could post two dozen links but i'm not going to waste more time than i am already.

(let's all pretend that the link doesn't include the word "greater" or put minnesota and maine, e.g., in the same category)

Going off a cliff will do that to a bicyclist.

― a strawman stuffed with their collection of 12 cds (jjjusten), Monday, October 5, 2015 11:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

zings beat thinking

could you hurry up and do another weird public sex thing or whatever to get yrself banned again?

whatever it was you did last time, i can't remember i just know it was something creepy as fuck, some dark weird shit, just go ahead and cut to the chase and do that again already and then you can get yrself banned and climax or whatever and we can be rid of you until the cycle begins again and you come in to twist yr nads and feel like daddy's big boy or whatever cuz you read some barnes and noble pop history

if we fused the two of you into a new poster, would it be "ballbag?" or "benballs"?

ballbo baggins

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51dijtbz7aL._SX300_.jpg

wd nominate ballbo baggins for our next mod though

i mean "new yorker" obviously has some cultural connotations but you wouldn't say that a guy from pennsylvania was a "new yorker" because he liked pizza and the yankees.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 12:17 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, look at all those pennsylvanian yankee fans - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-upshot-baseball.html

actually there are a few of them in NEPA, which happens to be part of the new york city metro area (mostly but not entirely the consolidated part), from which you might be surprised how many people commute to the city

philadelphians are different from new yorkers at the root on the woodard model (based on the "first effective settlement" doctrine first proposed by a guy at, as it happens, penn state), but a more contemporary political map of the sort developed by robert david sullivan (who i similarly referenced upthread and who was similarly ignored) puts them both in the northeast corridor region, just as joel garreau puts them both in the "the foundry". i don't think any of these models can be relied upon exclusively, as all of them are problematic in one way or another, but i find woodard's particularly fascinating and fun.

uh, yeah, ahistorical ballshit indeed

what got me banned the last time was exactly the sort of ballshit othering fascism you propose

you make every thread worse

yeah a lot of pennsylvanians really struggle to reconcile their identity as members of the foundry with their status as new yorkers, while striving manfully to be recognized by the northeast corridor region factionalists (who regard them as effective-settlers-come-latelys).

at long last, it's the pennsylvania we never found

thinking is hard

messengers should be shot

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-new-ideas-fail/381275/

at long last, it's the pennsylvania we never found

― Gorefest Frump (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 1:36 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes, we must hold tight to these state lines that define us inexorably from birth, for residents of new york city and buffalo and seneca falls and ticonderoga all have far more in common with one another than they do with residents of surrounding or distant states. when the revolution comes, lower manhattanites will band together with binghamtonians (or whatever) against hobokenites and harrisburgers.

no no, hobokenites cover new jersey and portions of maryland with enclaves in the dakotas

what got me banned the last time was exactly the sort of ballshit othering fascism you propose

― it's not a tuomas (benbbag), Tuesday, 6 October 2015 05:27 (1 hour ago) Permalink

are you that danish or norwegian or swedish or whatever guy who had an aneurysm (first symptom: posting in all caps) when i punned on some malapropism of his? or just someone else with a steel rail up their ass? or maybe you're not referring to me at all and this thread is moving too fast.

whatever the main point is that nobody but nobody thinks of hillary clinton as a 'hillbilly' these days. maybe white working class voters might identify with her more than, say, obama -- clinton was counting on that in 2008. but that was largely based on her being, you know, white, and not her taste for hominy grits or moonshine.

Where on the map is Pennsyltucky?

If Hillary is Appalachian, can I call Obama a Kenyan

http://i.imgur.com/HbgQ2aJ.jpg

"That John Denver is full of shit, man."

For the record I am a German American from Central Pennsylvania and I have no idea what you are talking about.

i wasn't referring to you amst. and whatever the scandinavian thing is supposed to be about - yes, i'm the guy who talked about lutherans - surely you're aware that i'm a new york jew? or should i say native new netherlander, with federal district and left coast influences, affiliated as most of us are with the yankee-led northern political coalition and sharing yankeedom's academic but not social culture.

as for the hillbilly thing, no of course not, and each "nation" has its urban and rural parts (little rock being more but not most so in its own; a blue city to be sure), which many would argue is today a more salient frame for the electorate, in the last two elections especially, but fails to explain why large swaths of rural yankeedom (more of it under obama) vote left while much of the urban far west (less of it under obama) still votes right. i'm not claiming that she's any such thing, only stating the simple fact that she lived in that region of the country for almost two decades and presuming that others will make the i-thought-obvious inference that someone who has done so has a better understanding of and feel for it than someone who hasn't. it's the same reason i thought a chris christie candidacy was doomed even before bridgegate - there was no indication that the guy had much understanding of the country beyond delaware or pennsylvania. it's certainly possible that bernie sanders, say, has an understanding of rural america that could appeal elsewhere - he's certainly more downscale in presentation - but i'll leave it to others to make the argument that he and not hillary clinton is going to be the guy who returns west virginia and arkansas to the blue column after months of coded anti-semitism or other forms of not-one-of-us (here the "he's a socialist" line is actually true) and jokes about free ben and jerry's for everyone.

nb i don't rule out the possibility that the ben and jerry's thing could actually (happen and) win the election. will make for fun voter fraud hoopla.

then again november's kind of the wrong month for free ice cream

Are you sure you're not from a Scandinavian country, gabbneb? There is something particularly Danish about your armchair socio-political babbling.

it's the same reason i thought a chris christie candidacy was doomed even before bridgegate

Gotta applaud you on this incredible, visionary statement. Only you saw through his facade. Everyone else here thought he was a winner

Amst.'s hillbilly comment may have been the most OTM thing said here in the past 12 hours.

Don't know how many hillbillies there are in the Texas panhandle, tho'.

surely you're aware that i'm a new york jew? or should i say native new netherlander, with federal district and left coast influences, affiliated as most of us are with the yankee-led northern political coalition and sharing yankeedom's academic but not social culture

good thing you're the only such unique melange in the country, otherwise one might start to worry that these arbitrary and unverifiable schematic categories might be useless for actually explaining or predicting anything

Are you sure you're not from a Scandinavian country, gabbneb? There is something particularly Danish about your armchair socio-political babbling.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 10:10 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do enjoy a good danish, but i'm more of a zabar's russian coffee cake kinda guy

i've also been known to offend danes by pronouncing copenhagen as if it were german. not intentionally, of course, but not without knowledge either.

it's peculiar, frederik b has been kinda quiet on this thread lately. last I saw, he was dashing into a phone booth, right about the time gabbo showed up.

paranoia, fear of the unknown, and attempts to punish outsiders are not peculiar at all. i'll dispense with the rejoinder and just laugh.

Uh, just wanted to add that that Colin Woodward book is really good, and clued me into a coupla historical trends I'd never really thought of before(e.g. why my home state of Michigan is more Anglo than German, but also why Wisconsin just across the lake is more German than Anglo, and Ohio being a particular mix of three different ethnographic vibes)

i have no problem with wild, inaccurate speculation. i do that all the time. but it's nice to add a little ~I Was Wrong, Whoops~ when you're clearly wrong rather than doubling and tripling > > > quindecupling down on something over the course of thousands and thousands of words.

You are just afraid of the unknown Karl Malone.

don't block, assist

benbbag, sorry i confused you. no, i didn't know where you were from or anything. i don't really have a good sense of who anyone is on this board, except the few folks i've met (over 10 yrs ago in most cases). sorry i was so rude!

still lol'ing at Ballbo Baggins

i don't know if you TrumpWatchers read the NYT Mag profile this week; he is literally indistinguishable from a mediocre SNL character. Howard Beale as pro wrestler.

Shocka of the day: Uncle Joe leaked his son's dying wish for him to run to MoDo for some cheap PR. He's so authentic, doncha know!

plus noxious rich asshole... Darth Warbucks xp

Didn't that happen, like, 3 months ago?

i thought it was worth noting in Leibovich (sp?)'s piece that one of Trump's audience-slaying lines in his Dallas arena speech was that Karl Rove is "an incompetent jerk"

part of this 'phenomenon' is Burn the House Down vibe