Kyrsten Sinema wins Arizona Senate. Now Dems have 47 seats to GOP's 51

[KathyPartdeux]

I’m sure that someone laying in a muddy foxhole appreciates the horror of Donnie mussing his hair and makeup.

[LurksNoMore]

McSally may be a Republican, but it looks like she’s not one of the Trumpetoid Republicans. Good on her.

[LurksNoMore]

@Ratel

Mercifully, every actual statistical piece of evidence suggests that those guys are a much smaller fraction of their generation than the ditto-heads were of ours.

Turns out a small number of loud and vocal nuts and assholes on the internet look like a much larger group of people. (And it doesn’t have to be nuts and assholes, even – at the risk of reigniting the eternal 2016 arguments, Bernie Sanders had extremely vocal and enthusiastic online support, but it was coming from a much smaller group of people than it looked like at first, and that showed in the actual primaries.)

[nungesser]

@xeni

and Mississippi, where there is a runoff.

Which, normally, would be a relative shoo-in for a Republican, but when said Republican was caught on tape cheering for the idea of a public hanging, it’s pretty clear a lot of people are sick of that crap, and her Democratic opponent is looking likely to win. Spoiler: her opponent is Black.

[RickMycroft]

@LurkingGrue

But thanks to shit like 4chan and gamergate we have a bumper croop of young up and coming sociopath assholes.

I wonder how much churn places like 4chan have? The older posters eventually finding something better to do as the younger ones join?

[Akimbo_NOT]

@Papasan

The Mississippi of the South West

SW Tom Sawyer: The dry river beds were hell on wooden rafts.

[the_borderer]

I had to look for tosh on 4chan on a few occasions, and I couldn’t understand the appeal of it even when I was in the target age group.

Maybe it’s because I never went through the Randian phase in my teenage years?

[nungesser]

@the_borderer

Maybe it’s because I never went through the Randian phase in my teenage years?

I am so very thankful that 4chan (and, well, the Internet) didn’t exist when I went through my brief Randian phase in high school, and it was able to burn off quickly by itself.

[anon21100188]

@ficuswhisperer

Who would have ever thought we’d see Arizona emerging as a swing state?

Karl Rove. He was very clear about these demographic shifts and what it would mean for the GOP going forward, and he had a pretty good plan to court conservative Hispanic voters and lock up these states for the foreseeable future, but the GOP had…other plans.

@Ratel

but I am old enough to appreciate, finally, how much better that is than the alternative, and however disappointing she turns out to be, it’s a step in the right direction for once

Man, you said it. She doesn’t have to be the next Paul Wellstone, she just has to be better than the alternative. It’s all about moving the center of gravity.

[LurksNoMore]

@anon21100188

Karl Rove. He was very clear about these demographic shifts and what it would mean for the GOP going forward, and he had a pretty good plan to court conservative Hispanic voters and lock up these states for the foreseeable future, but the GOP had…other plans.

IIRC, the GOP post-mortem election analyses in 2008 and 2012 pointed that out and made the case that the Republicans must change their tack to remain relevant, and the longer they delay the more painful the process is. Republican strategists have probably been saying the same thing for even longer; these demographic trends didn’t just pop up out of nowhere in the last couple of years, after all. And W.'s policy plans about immigration reform etc. definitely had making Hispanic voters more open to voting Republicans as one of their aims.

Of course, the Republican party thwarted W.'s immigration plans, and instead of following the suggestions of these studies, they’ve doubled down on the angry old white Southern men, again and again. Speaking as a layman, I think there are several reasons for this: short-term thinking that keeps putting off unpleasant decisions, ingrained bigotry of their core voter base (and more than a few politicians), and the lack of anything to offer except the culture wars bullshit and bigotry. The last has been prominent since the time Obama was initially elected: the GOP became a “party of No”, offering no constructive, positive policy initiatives with any substance to them, and instead just reflexively opposing everything the Democrats have tried to do.

[anon21100188]

It’s a hell of a “what if” for the country had the GOP made a strategic decision in 2005ish that it would shift away from immigration issues and seek to build coalitions in southwestern and western states with socially conservative Catholic Hispanics. There would have been a ton of common ground they could have found* and would have given GOP strategists an opportunity to play Hispanic voters against black voters which would fracture the Democratic base.

So, I guess it might be a good thing that the GOP decided instead to double down on being the party of white nationalists? Christ.

*assuming for the sake of argument that the GOP could have held its coalition of racists together in such an event–I concede that’s a big assumption

[evilkolbot]

Hasn’t the GOP decided that the demographic shift is inevitable so their two-pronged plan is cheating using gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement and compromising the physical vote, along with lurching far enough to the right that they may as well call themselves Nazis. Seems to be working.

[Perrin_Rynning]

Fortunately, being a sociopathic asshole has limited utility in politics, especially when they can’t turn it off. Two Scoops rode a crapton of frankly racist responses to (cue shuddering and clutchig pearls upon the fainting couch) eight years of a black man in the White House; and I really hope that he’s the last guy to do so in the US, ever.

[Perrin_Rynning]

That urge to oversimplify political landscapes grows out of the two-party system. News pundits find it easier to only need two party boxes into which they can sort all candidates.

I can only imagine the head-explosions if the system gets discarded and replaced with “all comers welcome” politics like we see in the UK. How I would love to watch Hannity try to explain the differences between six “major” political parties and six “minor” ones to the Faux News viewership…

[Ratel]

@d_r

At least she wasn’t Kelli Ward.

From a practical perspective, the only difference between McSally and Ward is that there was a chance that Ward would have would up in prison before the end of her term. I’m sure Ward would have said lots of offensive things, and the twitters would have gotten all vapoured, but their voting records would be identical.

@d_r

You’re in the district, so obviously have a better sense of her than we do. From the outside she seems pretty much a drop-in replacement for McCain, perhaps more hardline on anti-choice. If we can replace Flake with someone a twidge to his left with a “D” on here name, and McCain with an ideological clone (with less of a national platform), to me this seems like progress. Not major progress, just baby steps, but progress.

I am a recent (5 year) “immigrant” to AZ, so my historical context is limited, and I’m still learning about local politics.

McCain was mostly empty talk, but he did vote against his party once in a blue moon, and not just when it was safe to do so (unlike other so-called independent Republicans, cf. Rand Paul, Susan Collins). McSally will not.

Also, both McCain and McSally embraced Trump and racism in their campaigns, and I deeply resent the idea that they just get to say, “Oh, we were just willing to do anything to get elected, but now that’s over, so bygones.”

An important reminder, also, about Flake. Flake is a hard-core tea bagger. His beef with Trump is purely personal. It’s been disconcerting watching liberals make him out to be some kind of conservative with a conscience, when in fact he was just participating in a pathetic playground spat.