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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Small number ?

Roflol !!

Too cute.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Leave it to Miller to work in the use of angstroms in a rant about Gov Moonbeam and the state of CA.

Too damn funny.

I saw a minute or so the show when Glenn Beck was on. I don't know what GB's deal is, but he's turned into such a whiny pacifist, it's sickening. Not that he was confused w/ Gen. George Patton before, but I think his mind has finally succumb to too much religious introspective navel gazing. The dude's lost it.

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Originally posted by second:
Just wait two years and see Democrats come back. American politics is descending into a meaningless, demographically driven seesaw. www.vox.com/2014/11/5/7157187/2016-election

" . . . the "endless seesaw" model of American politics makes perfect sense.

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The presidential and non-presidential electorates look too different for either political party to optimize for both of them. Democrats have built a coalition that's optimized for presidential years, while the GOP has one that's optimized for off-years. And so we're set for a lot of big swings back and forth every two years."

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
No, Obama's policies were rejected, wholesale, by The People.

It's funny to see the spin that's going on now.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
Red states like Illinois, Wisconsin ( Governors ) and New York ( Legislature ) ...

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Friday, November 7, 2014

Obama Built That: Democrat 'Majority Coalition' Shrinks After Midterm Debacle
From Michael Barone, at IBD, "After Republican Wave, Obama Majority Has Shrunk":

Some observations on the election:

1) This was a wave, folks. It will be a benchmark for judging waves, for either party, for years.

2) In seriously contested races, Republican candidates were generally younger, more vigorous, more sunny and optimistic than Democrats. The contrast was sharpest in Colorado and Iowa, which voted twice for President Obama. Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst seemed to be looking forward to the future. Their opponents grimly championed the stale causes of feminists and trial lawyers of the past.

Democrats see themselves as the party of the future. But their policies are antique. The federal minimum wage dates to 1938, equal pay for women to 1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. Raising these issues now is campaign gimmickry, not serious policymaking.

Democratic leading lights have been around a long time. The party’s two congressional leaders are in their 70s. The governors of the two largest Democratic states are sons of former governors who won their first statewide elections in 1950 and 1978.

This has implications for 2016. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, worked in her first campaign in 1970. She has been a national figure since 1991. The Clintons’ theme song, “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,” was released in 1977. That will be 39 years ago in 2016.

3) The combination of Obama’s low job approval and Harry Reid’s virtual shutdown of the Senate ensured a Republican Senate majority. Reid prevented amendments — Mark Begich of Alaska never got to introduce one — that could have helped them in campaigns.

Votes were blocked on issues with clear Senate majorities — such as the Keystone XL pipeline, medical-device tax repeal, and the bipartisan patent-reform bill backed by Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.0.

That left Democrats running for reelection stuck with 95-plus percent Obama voting records. It left them with no independent votes or initiatives to point to. Reid kept Democratic candidates well stocked with money. But not with winning issues.

4) Democratic territory has been reduced to the bastions of two core groups — black voters and gentry liberals. Democrats win New York City and the San Francisco Bay area by overwhelming margins but are outvoted in almost all the territory in between — including, this year, Obama’s Illinois. Governor Jerry Brown ran well behind in California’s Central Valley, and Governor Andrew Cuomo lost most of upstate New York.

Democratic margins have shrunk among Hispanics and, almost to the vanishing point, among young voters. Liberal Democrats raised money to “turn Texas blue.” But it voted Republican by wider-than-usual margins this year.

Under Obama, the Democratic base has shrunk numerically and demographically. With superior organization, he was able to stitch together a 51 percent majority in 2012. But like other Democratic majority coalitions — Woodrow Wilson’s, Lyndon Johnson’s, even Franklin Roosevelt’s — it has proved to be fragile and subject to fragmentation.

5) In many states — including many carried twice by Obama — Republicans have been governing successfully, at least in the estimation of their voters. Governor Scott Walker has won his third victory in four years in Wisconsin against the frantic efforts of public-employee unions.

Governor John Kasich won a landslide victory against a flawed opponent in Ohio, and Governor Rick Snyder won solidly in Michigan after signing a right-to-work law hated by private-sector unions. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott’s second consecutive one-point victory means that Republicans will be in control for 20 years in what is now the nation’s third-largest state.

Democratic governance, in contrast, was rebuked by the voters in Massachusetts, in Maryland (with the nation’s fourth-highest black population in percentage terms), and in Obama’s home state of Illinois.

(6) The Obama Democrats labor under the illusion that a beleaguered people hunger for an ever-bigger government. The polls and the election results suggest, not so gently, otherwise.

The fiasco of HealthCare.gov, the misdeeds of the IRS, the improvisatory warnings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — all undermine confidence in the capacity of big government. Looking back over the last half-century, we can see that the highest levels of trust in government came, interestingly, during the administration of Ronald Reagan.

7) This election was a repudiation of the big-government policies of the Obama Democrats. It was not so much an endorsement of Republicans as it was an invitation to them to come up with better alternative policies..


http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/obama-built-that-democra
t-majority.html#.VF2YhDLEScU.twitter

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There's another thing: Republicans were in control of many state legislatures in 2010, the year that the Census comes out. In that year, states are allowed to redistrict in response to the changed population. That was the intent, anyway. But in that year, the GOP redistricted to vastly favor its party, and so we had the result of a Democratic majority of voters, but a Republican majority of politicians. Since redistricting hasn't happened since, there was probably some of that going on too- a discrepancy between how people voted and which people were elected.

So much for democracy and the will of the people!

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
My thread, my rules.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
And yet the Senate doesn't count acreage - it counts political divisions called states. Very itty bitty states like Rhode Island get the same representation as HUGE GIANT STATES like Alaska.


Were you trying to make a point about acreage? You get a FAIL.

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