Hard luck O'Connor, still pretty impressive. Definite chance of a turnaround come November.
2018 US Elections
- Thread starter Red Dreams
- Start date
The polls were pretty much spot on coming in and the results seem to match up. Very ominous for the GOP for November.
Looks like Matt Morgan made it onto the ballot for November.
Looks like Balderson has this in the bag. Ahead by 1600+ votes with 99% reporting.
GOP/Trump will be very nervous after tonight. This race should never have been this close.
Despite the fact Calley losing to Schuette in the Repub primary not being surprising..i am a bit surprised by how much Calley got beaten. Schuette is a candidate who scares me as he s as partisan and out for his own self interest as much as it's possible. Donnie will be happy. Seems like Whitmer has no choice but to take El-Sayed on her team to cater to both the far left and center. Hope voters will see Schuette for the Trump hack that he is when it comes to the general.
Yup. As long as Trump and the GOP continue in the same vein I'm very optimistic about a Dem house. Would be nice to see an emasculated Nunes (if he's still there).
anecdotal but everyone i talked to who voted republican was planning to vote for schuette and no one expected it to be close
Yeah I probably shouldn't be surprised. I'm sure things will get quite ugly in this race. MI will be seen as a potential huge get for the Trump base if they can mobilize their entire party. It ll be interesting to see how much fear mongering we ll see as a result of the gerrymandering and marijuana proposals. It ll all be played up like one giant liberal takeover conspiracy.
these people are so dumb. they really cant wrap their heads around the fact that most green party voters hate democrats and will never vote for a democrat. they really believe they are entitled to those votes
He’s right though. Cutting off the nose to spite the face, and all that.
Apparently, there are like 5000+ absentee ballots and 3000+ provisional ballots to count. That's why it's not been called yet.
Yep....although given the past results of the district its unlikely there will be enough of them to swing the race to O'Connor. His best shot is to do it again in 3 months.
Monmouth poll nailed it
Think Franklin is the only county where Balderson trails (almost by half). But he leads in all of the remaining counties. Depends where the ballots are coming from I guess.
they arent cutting off the nose though. they hate democrats and will never vote for them. they dont see it as cutting off the nose
I know a few Bernie refugees who went for Stein in 16. I'm sure there were a good number who couldn't bear to vote for Hillary and went Green instead.
a nonzero amount sure, but less than hillary primary mccain general voters
They may not view it as such, but in the grand scheme, that’s what they are doing. They are not helping their agenda get anywhere close to being accomplished.
The Trump EPA just approved looking for new uses for asbestos, for example. The Greens and Democrats would be on the same page on this, I would say.
voting for democrats hasnt helped their agenda get accomplished. you vote for your guy, they vote for their guy.
Realistically, of the two parties that actually contend for major elections, Democrats are much closer to the Green agenda than Republicans.
Ergo, whenever they vote for themselves and a Democrat loses by a narrow margin, they’ve hurt the one party that might do some of what they want done.
And yet still so far away from their agenda as to not be someone they are willing to vote for
Ergo, whenever they vote for themselves and a Democrat loses by a narrow margin, they’ve hurt the one party that might do some of what they want done.
Hence: cutting off the nose to spite the face
the green movement is based on ten key values
ecological wisdom
social justice
grassroots democracy
nonviolence
decentralization
community based economics
feminism
respect for diversity
personal and global responsibility
future focus
the democrats align with one or two of those policies. if you think that their values are similar to democrats or if this is just a "well republicans hate the epa" thing, you dont understand where they are coming from
Ideological purity and refusal to compromise is nice and all.
Unless you’re running for office or actually want anything on that list getting anywhere close to happening.
im not a member of the green party so you dont need to scold me. im explaining where these people are coming from and why a vote for a green party candidate is not a vote lost for a democratic candidate because the people who vote green were never going to vote for a democrat in the first place
I’m not scolding you, I’m criticizing them.
Besides that, I count 6 things on that list that are Democratic values. Are they as extreme, no. But are they closer than the GOP will ever be? Hell yes they are.
ill give them feminism and respect for diversity. the rest arent democratic values beyond occasional lip service
Either way... without the Democratic Party in power, Greens will never see anything close to their platform come to fruition.
They need to see the forest instead of the tree. Pun intended.
they wont see their platform come to fruition by just voting dem party line either
No, not all of it, but they’ll come a lot closer than they ever will by not.
Look at the Progressives of the late 19th/early 20th century. They were politically savvy enough to realize that they could co-opt the Republican Party to push through parts of their platform... and it worked. Until they refused to back Taft and cut off their nose to spite their face in the 1912 election.
The Greens ought to take note.
there are different strategies for different people. im no longer convinced that allowing themselves to be coopted by an imperialist corporate party in favor of incrementalist gains that are rolled back by republicans immediately upon taking office is a worthwhile strategy
I’d say I have a very different definition of what is politically “worthwhile” than a “party” with 2 state level elected officals nationwide.
Ideological purity will not get them anywhere, nor has it ever for anyone else.
Another historical example... Abolitionists co-opting the Republican Party (the “Radical Republicans”) to bring about the 13th Amendment.
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i dont think its ideaological purity. i would vote for whitmer if i still lived in michigan this fall. but its about recognizing that its impossible to change the system through the democratic party because it is complicit in the system and needs to maintain the system for the benefit of the people who run the party.
as an aside though, ideaological purity did pretty well for the tea party, which now almost entirely controls the republican party
as an aside though, ideaological purity did pretty well for the tea party, which now almost entirely controls the republican party
They aren’t practicing ideological purity though, as they are working and compromising within the structure of one of the two major parties, instead of breaking off and forming a separate one.
Some of their agenda gets through, but not all of it.
They’re basically doing what I said the Greens should do. If you think they’ve been successful, then I rest my case.
they primaried anyone who wasnt on their side. they took out the house majority leader with a nutty professor. they took over the party with idealogical purity. they didnt say "with obama in office, we need to unite and then once we have a red wave we can figure out the details". so thats one way of looking at it.
another way is that the two situations arent truly comparable because the tea party didnt have any major fundamental disagreements with republicans in the way that greens and socialists do. the democratic party is an imperialist party run by corporations and technocrats. one interpretation which i find compelling is that you can never take over that party from the inside because those things are so fundamental to what party leadership cares about and what a good chunk of the base believes. i think economic populism is a winning message for democrats and i think the base is well to the left of leadership on that but i think actual anti war policies are still political losers, even in democratic primaries. so you could look at it from that perspective and say that democrats will never change and its impossible to achieve change within the party so they wont put their efforts and they wont compromise their principles towards helping a pro war party.
another way is that the two situations arent truly comparable because the tea party didnt have any major fundamental disagreements with republicans in the way that greens and socialists do. the democratic party is an imperialist party run by corporations and technocrats. one interpretation which i find compelling is that you can never take over that party from the inside because those things are so fundamental to what party leadership cares about and what a good chunk of the base believes. i think economic populism is a winning message for democrats and i think the base is well to the left of leadership on that but i think actual anti war policies are still political losers, even in democratic primaries. so you could look at it from that perspective and say that democrats will never change and its impossible to achieve change within the party so they wont put their efforts and they wont compromise their principles towards helping a pro war party.
If there's one thing your political system needs the most, it's a broader spectrum of choices. As of now you basically have to choose from 2 conservative parties, one of the moderate taste, and another one which seems to become more and more extremist by the day.
Yes, there are progressive people and ideas to be found in the Democratic Party, and they even seem to surge right now, but you can bank on most of their policies getting confiscated and watered down by the corporate/moderate wing of party, which is still in tight control, once the party is back in power.
Even something as basic as Universal Healthcare got torpedoed by democratic "moderates" back in early Obama days, and is still decried as evil commie stuff by those circles.
As long as this 2-party system stays intact there is no way of escaping the blatantly obvious corporate agenda setting.
Yeah, when they couldn’t push through universal healthcare even with the Obama surge you have to wonder what hope there is for progressives unless they remake the party in their image. It’s why I don’t blame them at all for trying to do exactly that and primarying moderates wherever they stand against true progressive values. As long as they vote D in the general regardless.