Jump to content

berlinerbaer

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    745
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by berlinerbaer

  1. 27 minutes ago, Mack Tripper said:


    The Politico article second guessing, before the election, that Beto should have run as a moderate ignores not only the past results in Texas, where moderate milquetoast candidate after candidate have been trounced, but also the current reality, where in the special elections, primaries, and polls, progressives running as unapologetic progressives have had real success.

    This. The fact is that nobody knows how a Democrat can win Texas until one actually does.

    Trump's approval rating hanging at 40% despite him progressively becoming and even bigger piece of shit over the past 20 months demonstrates the folly of attempting to appeal to Republicans. Beto is 100% correct that his path to victory is turning this state from the worst in voter turnout into something better. There are new people who haven't yet chosen a side who need to be targeted.

    Phil Bredesen in TN has as good a shot as Beto, if not better, running as a moderate. But he's already a household name there, so it's apples to oranges.

    I do share the same criticism as many of you about Beto's campaign. Particularly his ad buys in the late summer to early fall months and perceived lack of outreach to latino voters. I took it as a bad sign that he lost so many of the border counties during the primary. Hopefully, he gets a big election day turnout.

    • Like 1
  2. Aaaannnd Jon Ralston predicts Jacky Rosen to win in NV on Tuesday.

    https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/predictions-for-tuesday

    Quote

    Prediction: Rosen, 48 percent; Heller, 46 percent; others and None of these candidates, 6 percent.

    Spoiler

    Even though the Democratic machine has not built as big of a firewall as in 2012 – 47,000 in Clark County and 23,000 statewide – this is a midterm, and it will be enough. I think.

    This has been a strange fortnight of early voting, with turnout much higher than usual for a non-presidential year and with momentum seeming to build for the Democrats and culminating with a Friday wave of votes. (You can read all of the dynamics here on my blog.)

    But what’s clear is that younger people are voting in higher numbers, that while the president has animated the right as no other Republican can, Trump Fatigue is beginning to settle in the saner corners of the political universe and anger is rising. What’s also quite evident is that Washoe County, which saved Heller in 2012 when he won by 20,000 votes, has changed a lot. Democrats lead there after early voting by almost 2,000 votes. Heller may win Washoe, where Hillary Clinton also won, but not by a lot more than she did (3,000 votes).

     

  3. 3 hours ago, horncyclist said:

    Im fairly optimistic we can make a lot of progress in ending gerrymandering in this next redistricting cycle. Obviously in states with split control this should happen  but even were Dems have the opportunity to gerrymandering, I think they'll be pushed to draw fair districts. There's a lot of overlap between the end gerrymandering crowd and Dems pushing other structural reforms like campaign finance reform. See Beto.

    There are ballot measures meant to address redistricting in four states.

    MI and CO - independent commission for congressional and state leg (all likely to pass)

    UT - semi-independent commission (likely to pass)

    MO - independent demographer draws state leg maps, requires 70% of leg to overrule, also imposes campaign contribution limits

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/forget-about-the-candidates-what-else-is-on-the-ballot-this-week/

    • Like 1
  4. 3 hours ago, MidTexHorn said:

    I see a million Ted Cruz TV ads for every handful of Beto ads. Irritating and not in line with the fundraising numbers. I guess they’re just spending their money completely differently. Hope not works for Beto. 

    Some of those ads are put out by Cruz proxies and not the campaign itself.

    Beto beats Cruz head-to-head in raising money, but he isn't competing with just the Cruz campaign. He's competing against the Cruz campaign, the Republican Senatorial Committee, the RNC, and too many PACs and other proxies to name. The Cruz campaign money plus indirect investment from these orgs likely dwarfs Beto's $38 million.

    At some point, the TV ad market reaches saturation, with so many campaigns and proxies buying what limited air time exists. I have no idea how that works.

     

  5.  

    15 hours ago, Message Board User said:

    Tennessee early voting numbers.

     

    All counties under 100% of 2014 are rural (no idea why). Davidson (Nashville), Hamilton (Chatanooga), Rutherford (suburban Nashville), Shelby (Memphis), and Williamson (suburban Nashville) are all over 200%. That's the top four urban population areas except Knoxville (Knox county is at 170%).

    We'd all be jumping up and down if a similar situation was playing out in Texas. This is great news for Bredesen.

  6. 33 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    Is this guy on anti-seizure meds or a stroke survivor? I've never heard him speak before. Why does he talk like that?

    Olson came to talk at my company back in 2016 and yes, that's how he talks. He gave some mildly chauvinistic anecdote from his time in the Navy about some poor Australian cadet making a fool of himself in front of an American female sailor. Pretty harmless stuff. He made fun of Trump and told everyone to vote, "even if it's for the Democrat".

    Fast forward two years and he has singed a ridiculous petition to award the Orangutan the Nobel Peace Prize and is now ranting like a goddamned lunatic. Sri clearly has him rattled. 

  7. 3 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

     My wife just got done with her second door knocking campaign. They have an app that shows who in the area has done some sort of engagement that indicates Democrat support. Liking Beto on Facebook, voting Democrat in this primaries, contributing, etc. The whole mission is to go, ask about whether the person has early voted, and if not help them make a plan on when they are doing it. It is intentionally designed not to  annoy people who don’t already lean that way. 

    Only about 20% of the people I've talked to are Cruz supporters because the campaign really did a good job identifying supporters and potential supporters. Most Cruz people fall into one of the following categories:

    1) A spouse of someone on my list. This is the most common. 2) The person on my list moved and the new occupants are Rs. 3) The person on my list went off to college but still have their permanent address and I end up talking to their parents. 4) They are wavering Republicans. 5) A mistake in the app.

    It's definitely an expanded list compared to the Democratic party VAN (list of Dem primary voters). They knocked on 900k doors in the run up to the GOTV phase which helped add some new names, aside from the above-mentioned techniques.

    40 minutes ago, Shenanigans said:

    The Beto phone-bankers and door-knockers are literally just helping people find early voting/election day locations and trying to help them prepare a plan to vote. They aren't trying to convince people to vote for a candidate over the other. Seems like a pretty ridiculously thing to get butthurt about

    When we encounter a Cruz voter, we politely end the conversation and head elsewhere. The feeling is almost always mutual.

    The undecided voters OTOH we do try to push towards Beto. Most of them will at least hear us out and a few are actually pretty easy to sway. That's how I know that Lobo is full of shit.

    • Like 2
  8. Beto GOTV results from this weekend. About 220k doors knocked (short of the 400k goal), brining the grand total to just over one million since 10/13. That's on track to 1.8M knocks total by election day.

  9. 2 minutes ago, sushihorn said:

    All true.  But look at NC.  There isn't even a senate or governor's race to not be interested in.  And they are already above 2014 EV turnout with a week to go.

    It's a purple state with a few competitive House districts, a Democratic governor, and an out-of-control Republican dominated state legislature. The Ds want blood but will be met with a strong R turnout.

  10. 24 minutes ago, sushihorn said:

    Maybe 1/3 to half of the nation, including TX, FL and GA are within 20-25% of 2016.  Another group is well above 2014 but still far short of 2016.  States like OH, MT, WV,..  But there are a surprising number of laggards that are little if any higher than 2014.  IA and CO but most notably CA - which is surprising since they have both a senate and governor's race at the top of the ticket.

    The senate and gubernatorial races in CA are in the bag for the Dems. Unless they live in one of the swingy congressional districts, there aren't any reason for the non-partisans to show up.

  11. 1 hour ago, gsoda3 said:

    Is Merkel going to have to form a coalition with AfD? That's what it feels like.

    This was a statewide race, not a nationwide parliamentary election. Within Hesse, the current coalition is CDU-Green, which will remain since the Greens picked up just enough seats to maintain the majority despite CDU losses. Bavaria is also CDU-Green.

    The trends country-wide are definitely more troubling. The Greens aren't popular everywhere, so if the SPD were to lose too many seats in the Bundestag, those seats would be replaced by a combination of Green, Left, and AfD, the latter two of which are more popular in the former East German states. It would be the CDU attempting to put something together out of a bunch of scraps. I don't know if the German system allows for a three-party coalition.

    • Like 1
  12. 3 hours ago, kopp0e said:

    Maybe Cal shoulda kept Tedford...

     

    No. He was done. The program was on the verge of academic sanctions and recruiting was tanking in 2012. He needed a few years off.

    Similar start at FSU as Cal back in '02-'03. The difference now will be that he will have full institutional support at his alma mater that he didn't have at Cal.

  13. 1 hour ago, Doc Sam Beckett said:

    Is HGTV the one with all the flipping houses shows? If so, then a fucking lot of people under 65 watch it 

    You're right. I can't keep the reality shows straight anymore.

    In any case, she's not the only Beto supporter who want the gloves to come off.

×
×
  • Create New...