"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

"suburban women"/"soccer mom" are just euphemisms for white women, no?

no -- it means white women with college degrees which is decidedly not the same thing

and soccer-playing kids

they care a lot about the cost of imported fruit because they need to bring orange slices to practice once per season

single issue voters on this

There are two semi-monolithic blocs of American voters - white evangelicals and African-Americans.

If we're going to separate out the white evangelicals from other evangelicals, I think we can separate out the non-Orthodox Jews from other Jews, and I gotta believe we are close to as politically monolithic as the other two groups -- not just in partisan preference, I feel like I could walk into a conservative or reform shul anywhere coast to coast and pretty much get the same narrow band of political takes.

non-orthodox jews include both republicans and democrats, come on

can i just say that i keep waiting for Morbs to show up here and start talking shit and it's making me a bit sad that it's not happening

I didn't realize it until you said it but yeah

yes.

re trump being a “tough guy”.. i have no doubt he has watched goons kick the shit out of people who crossed his dad, and later him. so he thinks he’s tough by proxy, and in a way it’s even better, since he doesn’t have to get mussed himself

Donald Trump’s debt totals at least $1.1bn. Should he win re-election, about $900m of it will come due during his second term https://t.co/nxwa0GhbtN pic.twitter.com/EK9MiVUiAn

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) October 26, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O05mMuDvnLc

(nearly 6k posts in under a month btw)

"suburban women"/"soccer mom" are just euphemisms for white women, no?

no -- it means white women with college degrees which is decidedly not the same thing

No again. It means MARRIED white women.

Single white women skew Democratic.

Married white women skew Republican.

Ban straight marriage

Upper-middle class married white women*

old grey mare she ain't what she used to be

I know this is a bullshit outsider perspective but it seems to me that systemic racism is enabled/perpetuated by America’s fascination with race-based differences in politics, voting intentions etc. Like virtually half of US political discourse/polling involves thinking of people’s decision making as if it was determined by race.
I get that the reason is that people in different racial groups are differently affected by policies, but the continual message is that race determines thinking. Which seems like a driver to me.

We have two political parties and one has made white supremacy their core value for 50 years. (And the other one courted the white supremacists before that.)

It’s an unavoidable part of voting calculations and “what’s the matter with Kansas”-style questions of why someone who would theoretically be harmed by white supremacy would vote against their interests.

The 'soccer mom' imagery was supposed to conjure up a suburban mother of school aged children with enough spare time and devotion to her kids to constantly drive them to their after-school soccer practice and games.

Because soccer skews heavily white, that inference was def intended. Because children + spare time to drive them around skews heavily toward middle class and married, those inferences were intended. Because kids of school age tends heavily toward the 29 -45 age bracket, that inference was def intended, too. Add all those together and there will be a noticeable skewing toward college education, but not as definite as the other demographics.

Lastly, because several of these factors tend to offset one another in terms of skewing toward liberalism vs. conservatism, the 'soccer mom' imagery was supposed to be the very model of the wavering centrist each party wants to capture. It's just an accurate reflection of how marketing people are taught to think. Hard to say how accurate it is, politically, but the idea sure got sold to candidates and pundits very effectively.

i know i'm probably imagining this, but mcconnell sounds old as hell right now

maybe he'll pull a Pontypool and just die in the Senate chamber while repeating the same unremarkable word over and over again

"cloture....cloture....cloture....cl-cl-cloture..."

god he's being such an assfuckstain

his hand doesn't look discolored anymore :(

when he said "the democrats pioneered it", referring to the filibuster, i automatically said "but you perfected it", and was kind of surprised when he didn't say it with me

staring at him hoping for a Redd Foxx chest-clutch death

lol @ "policymaking, which is what we do here", mr Graveyard

a lot of people give me shit for watching debates or state of the unions or whatever. i will say this: listening to mcconnell make this speech is excruuuuuuciating, like an order of magnitude more painful than the typical trump speech

the Pinter pauses would have me calling on his understudy to take over

it is excruciating because mitch is twisting the knife

what the democrats want, you see, is activist judges

maybe Kavanaugh will have a little autoerotic asphyx accident this weekend

oh bullshit, Mitch, they woulda confirmed a Republican nominee in 2016. like Dems always do.

like the Dems woulda Robert Borked in the 21st century

"elections have consequences", he says, referring to trump's losing the popular vote by 3 million

Rand Paul walking around the floor unmasked, that motherfucker

There's a guy near me who wears a Rob Paul shirt on the weekends, and has a sticker on his car still. I've had to restrain myself when I see him

welp, there it is.

it's done.

fuck

globetrotters dunk all over the generals, again.

the globetrotters own the ball and got to have more players on the floor

pretty cool that this asshole will most likely be shitting all over progressive legislation until after I’m dead

Get power. Control the legislature and the executive. Pass laws that are unambiguous, constitutional, and hard to challenge.. Strive to make the court irrelevant.

These are the imperatives.

Strange how the consequences of 2012 election didn't last as long as the 2016 elections huh

Election's

pretty cool that this asshole will most likely be shitting all over progressive legislation until after I’m dead

Had the same thought. She's the first person younger than me appointed to the court.

Not possible to make the court irrelevant without packing it, explicitly taking judicial review off the table or something along those lines.

Even if your progressive legislation is "unambiguous and constitutional," courts acting politically can create the basis to challenge it all the way up the ladder.

She’s a little older than I am but I bet she lives waaaay longer!!

Xp ok but it's not like she reports to work tomorrow and immediately they hold a little internal vote and suddenly there's no Roe, no ACA, no same-sex marriage, and chattel slavery is reestablished.

Right? Don't they kinda have to rule on specific cases that come before them, through appellate channels, based on the facts and circumstances of each specific case?

Happy to be corrected but I suspect there are a few intermediate steps between Barrett's confirmation and The Handmaid's Tale

3 Trump campaign emails in the last 2.5 hours. The most recent one carried the subject line "America: 3 Democrats: 0." I want him to die of hemorrhagic fever.

Right? Don't they kinda have to rule on specific cases that come before them,

sure

through appellate channels,

sure

based on the facts and circumstances of each specific case?

nope

(obviously there are intermediate steps, no one is claiming otherwise)

Theyre in motion as we type for sure