Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

polls are so increasingly useless (well aware of the confirmation bias I'm exhibiting)

do people just lie to pollsters more than ever now?

A pretty data-heavy breakdown of the mostly prejudiced treatment of critical race theory on social media here:
https://stoponlinevaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CRT_-Controlled-by-Conservative-Media.31.pdf

At a high level, it is clear that white Conservative narratives (starting with Christian responses to the Southern Baptist Conference and including Conservative media and high profile individuals), have dominated the Facebook discourse around CRT since early in 2020. We found that Social Justice, Liberal/Progressive, and pages by Black-identified administrators accounted for a small fraction of the total posts on Facebook. By and large, Conservative posts did not include representation from Black Scholars but were much more likely to be shared than posts from Black-identified pages:
- Conservative and Republican pages comprised an overall 69.7% of the pages and 90.8% of the shares…
- Overall, Social Justice and Liberal/Progressive pages accounted for 8.2% of the posts and 4.6% of the shares.

do people just lie to pollsters more than ever now?

I've seen enough: Gov. Phil Murphy (D) defeats Jack Ciattarelli (R) in the New Jersey governor's race. #NJGOV

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2021

In more important news, did JFK Jr. and The Rolling Stones jam last night?

polls are so increasingly useless (well aware of the confirmation bias I'm exhibiting)

Weren’t VA polls pretty much spot on?

yes, don't think any of this hinged on polling issues

As a NJ resident, it's shocking to see this race so close. All the polls beforehand made it seem Murphy didn't have much to worry about. To be honest, I almost didn't bother to vote. I guess a lot of people probably saw the polls and thought like I did.

I voted. My precinct got fancy new touch-screen machines, but they showed you your vote on a piece of paper before you hit the button to confirm it. I wasn't expecting an Adams-Sliwa style blowout, but I thought Murphy had it comfortably in the bag.

polls are so increasingly useless (well aware of the confirmation bias I'm exhibiting)
Weren’t VA polls pretty much spot on?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, November 3, 2021 10:56 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

see disclaimer

lol at repubs not knowing how counting works and thinking the fix is in because Bergen County was red late last night before they started counting mail-ins and flipped this morning to blue.

In more important news, did JFK Jr. and The Rolling Stones jam last night?

I shouted out, "who killed the Kennedys"
When after all, it was Hill-a-REEE

so do Republicans now trust the results of elections or what

lol at repubs not knowing pretending they don't know how counting works and thinking pretending the fix is in because Bergen County was red late last night before they started counting mail-ins and flipped this morning to blue.

Which keeps their base angry and more inclined to try to stop mail in voting.

Virginia's result showed that very generous early voting rules (don't know about absentee ballots) doesn't necessarily hurt Republicans.

I do think the wildly inaccurate NJ polling contributed to the already prevalent Democrat complacency. It seems GOP often outperforms in off-cycle/mid-term elections. For an older GOP voter, voting is probably the high point of their week. For the younger skewing typical Democratic voter, actually having to go somewhere in physical form and wait in line seems horribly old-fashioned and crimps their style.

what about if there's pizza

These are people who will use DoorDash if it means not having to put on pants.

we need voting apps

Lifelong Virginia voter here: I question the received wisdom on "Democrat complacency."

First let me acknowledge that I live in a very Democratic bubble (like, knowing multiple people with "nevertheless, she persisted" tattoos kind of bubble). In addition to voting, many of us donated, volunteered, went door-to-door, canvassed, phone-banked, put out signs, did GOTV shiznit, yadda yadda.

Let me say this: I do not know a Democrat who did not vote. Zero. None. Nada. Zilch. We all got the fuck off the couch and went as absentee, in-person absentee, mail-in, witnessed, non-witnessed, and GAH ASKDJFAKJTILEJG FOR FUCK'S SAKE WE HAD THE OPTION OF CURBSIDE VOTING THIS YEAR! um, ahem, we had multiple modalities of voting available to us.

At some point we need to consider that maybe there are... in some places at some times... just not quite enough of "us."

And DEFINITELY not enough persuadable independents / nonvoters / disaffected moonbeams who don't feel we are focused enough on their personal fruity-ass wish list.

signed, privileged-ass white boy who volunteered for Doug Wilder

this is one take

Democrats got more votes than they ever had in a Virginia gubernatorial election and lost. Lots of people invested in "we need to excite the base" takes, but the base turned out. https://t.co/XvWEY4kza5

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 3, 2021

i haven't seen anyone account for the fact that the population of VA is growing. maybe not enough to make this take wrong though. i.e. dems did a basically ok job of turning out their base with anti trump messaging. the problem here seemed to be that VA has enough swing voters who are willing to vote republican if trump isn't on the ballot to make the difference, especially when combined with the schools stuff, e.g.

Virginia 2020 —> White women
50% Biden (D), 49% Trump (R)

Virginia 2021 —> White women
57% Youngkin (R), 43% McAuliffe (D)

A 15-point swing to the GOP with this group.

(via @NBCNews Exit Polls)

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 3, 2021

that general situation seems like it will still be the case in 2022 :-(

i hate to say it but i think the best chance the dems have is if trump is on the ballot in 2024 tbh, because the anti-trump vote is going to wither away if he doesn't run, and the dems are obviously not doing enough in DC to excite the base otherwise.

yeah mcauliffe got 200,000 more votes than Northam did in 2017 (which was enough for northam to win in a landslide)

VA and NJ seems to be quite different cases. Fully willing to believe base was energized in VA. I didn't see evidence of that in NJ.

here are my anecdotes. i just moved to st. louis (city, not county). last night i met my three neighbors in the building (it's four units). the first was a 23-year-old conservative who only got vaccinated because he had to for work. but he was nice, and i got him high and then he drank all my whiskey. decent kid, tbh. the second was someone my mom's age who thinks covid is a hoax and that ivermectin is great. (i gave her the blunt "that's what my dad thought too. he just died of covid, and my mom still refuses to get vaccinated. they're both wrong" speech that i've typed many times but rarely spoken, and she responded that my mom was right to refuse to get vaccinated still.) the third neighbor knocked on my door at 11:00 pm to ask me to be quiet. i was playing Meitei's Komachi on one speaker (don't have the other one wired yet) at an ambient volume, such that it couldn't be heard at all when the heat came on.

we're all fucked

Morning, Karl!

ok so Karl Malone - an ilx hero, a stalwart warrior whose steadfastness I have oft admired - is embracing the "we're all fucked" take.

caek is on to something with

dems did a basically ok job of turning out their base with anti trump messaging. the problem here seemed to be that VA has enough swing voters who are willing to vote republican if trump isn't on the ballot to make the difference

Which echoes my kinda-insane rant from a few minutes ago

Lifelong Virginia voter here: I question the received wisdom on "Democrat complacency."

First let me acknowledge that I live in a very Democratic bubble (like, knowing multiple people with "nevertheless, she persisted" tattoos kind of bubble). In addition to voting, many of us donated, volunteered, went door-to-door, canvassed, phone-banked, put out signs, did GOTV shiznit, yadda yadda.

Let me say this: I do not know a Democrat who did not vote. Zero. None. Nada. Zilch. We all got the fuck off the couch and went as absentee, in-person absentee, mail-in, witnessed, non-witnessed, and GAH ASKDJFAKJTILEJG FOR FUCK'S SAKE WE HAD THE OPTION OF CURBSIDE VOTING THIS YEAR! um, ahem, we had multiple modalities of voting available to us.

At some point we need to consider that maybe there are... in some places at some times... just not quite enough of "us."

And DEFINITELY not enough persuadable independents / nonvoters / disaffected moonbeams who don't feel we are focused enough on their personal fruity-ass wish list.

signed, privileged-ass white boy who volunteered for Doug Wilder

...which I have no intention of softening or retracting or whatever

KM, maybe we should make deprogramming your decent neighbor our pet project. Tell him you have some "friends" on the internet who want to chat with him.

but not share their whiskey

"i was playing Meitei's Komachi on one speaker"

holy shit of all the albums to get a noise complaint about

(Just remember, when the normals show up, we're all 'moderate'/'independent'.)

ok so Karl Malone - an ilx hero, a stalwart warrior whose steadfastness I have oft admired - is embracing the "we're all fucked" take.

caek is on to something with

ty but i also think we're all fucked, just to be clear.

New: At least 6 Republicans who attended the Jan. 6 rally which turned into the insurrection were elected to office on Tuesday https://t.co/3iLFYsm7BN

— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) November 3, 2021

holy shit of all the albums to get a noise complaint about

seriously, that anecdote/experience only makes sense to ambient heads, but it was unbelievable.

Yes let's deprogram neighbors one at a time, which, let's see, multiplied by two to seven million neighbors (depending on distribution in key precincts / districts), um, carry the two... is... maybe we're all fucked

"we're all fucked" was kind of a joke.

but definitely if we do turn out to be fucked, i will later say that i thought it was possible

i have to say, the 23-year-old conservative may very well have a chance. i talked to him for about an hour. he's stuck in "let me play devil's advocate here" mode, but so was i at that age.

i can fix him

Okay so let's factor in the cost of midrange whiskey...

yup

we're fucked

Maybe if we bring out the good whiskey? I have some Woodford Reserve I will happily donate to the cause of unfucking the nation.

I don't think "we're all fucked" should be a controversial take at this point.

Yes let's deprogram neighbors one at a time, which, let's see... is... maybe we're all fucked

"We're fucked" is a given in any proposals I put forth, maybe I should have been more clear.

KM seriously tho I wonder if any of that generation can be reached without a deep dive into the slimier political corners of Instagram and Reddit to understand specifically which sort of disingenuous bad-faith concern trolling the individual is susceptible to.

xp

Not with that attitude, jon. You're probably still offering Jim Beam or something.

At least get some Maker's Mark and let's get this country back on track.

xp this kid was so kind that he venmo'd me $50 for the whisky he drank and the glass pipe he dropped and broke. except he was drunk so he accidentally venmo'd me $150. I sent it all back this morning :)

xp viborg

i wonder that too. but, a good sign: he's a total gaming nerd, and i showed him my Steam (pc games) collection and he likes a lot of the solo simulation/strategy games that i do. so we have that in common. and also, we "broke bread" and hung out on my couch for a while, and got along ok, and he seemed to actually be listening to the things i said. he was ignoring his girlfriend's calls and he called out sick this morning with a hangover, but still, i think we made good progress

Maybe we're overthinking this, Karl. St. Louis is a beer city. Let's get Schlafly on board somehow.

(the brewery, not Phyllis)

it all goes back to public citizen/private partnerships. we all need to get sponsored by our favorite companies

A lot of progressives across the country as well as in Buffalo were enthused by what a few months ago had seemed like the near certainty that India Walton, a self-described democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary against longtime Mayor Byron Brown, would be the next Mayor of Buffalo. But it appears that Mayor Byron Brown has managed a comeback victory as a write-in candidate.

...To me though the big lesson here is that it is unbelievably hard to win an election as a write-in candidate. We don’t know the margin of Brown’s apparent victory yet. At the moment it’s about 40% of the votes for Walton and roughly 60% are write-ins. Presumably virtually all of those write-ins are for Brown. But given the nature of write-ins those ballots all have to be visually inspected. There are already a lot of claims that the fix was somehow in for Brown, the establishment candidate. That’s the wrong lesson. When you manage to lose that decisively to a write-in candidate the only reasonable interpretation is that the city’s voters didn’t want you to be mayor. Period.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/india-walton-goes-down-to-defeat-to-write-in-mayor

i'm not in full on catastrophe mode yet, but it strikes me that since i don't have family and don't own a home, i might be able to truly "escape" America before 2022/24 hits

I do wonder what the strategy for the Dems is going forward. I get that McAuliffe ran an uninspiring campaign and it's probably a big mistake to talk a lot about Trump in elections where he's not even running...but he got more votes than Northam did. It's the Republican base that's energized, despite the fact that the Dems have done basically nothing, and that Trump before them didn't really deliver a damn thing either (for those making less than $50,000,000). not only is the deck massively stacked in the GOP's favor, but there is legitimately no political gravity on their side, as posted above you can incite a goddamn insurrection and pay zero price for it. not only that but Congress is fucked to the point where Dem senators representing like 70% of the population can get their entire agenda shuttered by a single moderate. What do they do?

Personally, I think it starts with messaging, which they are incredibly bad at. Biden is getting hammered about Afghanistan (not saying it's relevant here) & his bill is just a constant source of "Dems in disarray" stories, and none of that is coming with any pushback. They aren't blitzing the media the way the GOP does, they aren't really making a case for themselves, they sure as hell aren't accomplishing anything, it's all "remember Trump" and "remember 1/6" and dumb little "pass it on" messages about climate change. Is it really smart to lean into the more progressive wing of the party, given that Bernie got defeated pretty soundly by Biden and progressives aren't really tearing it up at the polls either? I don't really have the answers. But they really need to figure this out quick.

i'm sure they'll figure it out soon

blitzing the media the way the GOP does

for all the talk of the biased MSM they are pretty shitty with their both sides crap and bad headlines while fox and the like are squarely in their corners.

I'm sort of in the "we're all fucked" camp. Messaging, sure, but if the other side just doesn't give a shit about honesty (intellectual or literal), and has a sizable chunk that is either essentially voting/running on restricting rights and overturning elections for make-believe reasons, or has fallen so deep into dystopian fantasy that they believe Jesus/JFK Jr./whomever is coming back from the dead to reinvade Afghanistan because Toni Morrison is making our kids trans, and also covid is fake but so is the vaccine, which is why they took (real) horse dewormer to counter the (fake) virus, then how do you counter that? You just end up wasting all your time and energy and money and oxygen and capital trying to convince a fraction of them that, yes, the world is round and the sky is blue, and meanwhile the rest of them will push back with all their might and ignorance against even the most basic stuff that really shouldn't need correction, amplification or affirmation.

blitzing the media the way the GOP does

there's also the thought of what this world would be like if that "worked" for democrats. breitbart/carlson/levin on the right, and some equivalent on the left, creating a bubble of complete nonsense on the left. of course that bubble of nonsense on the left already exists, but it's nowhere near the size/influence of the right. but if it were to grow and counter the GOP's nonsense? maybe that would work, politically, but man, what a shitty world