Because a lot of people on here are D partisans they and everyone they talk to think Ds are hopeless, inept and not as good as Rs. Actually a functional party has one purpose — winning elections — and Ds do it well. The GOP’s recent track record is the one that raises questions.
Nov 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The main impediment to that is Republican lawmakers in MI, PA and WI keeping regulations on election offices that slow down the count
Anyway, squint and you can see a path to victory for O'Dea in this poll (Bennet's only at 48%) but with ballots about to drop it is a pretty tight one. Consistent w the theme of what public polling there's been so far.
Feb 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Thread. Changing VRA standards could cut both ways
This is a very significant finding from Ruy Texeira, 1st flagged in my TL by @mattyglesias -- looks like Latino voters split along educational lines in 2020 theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrat…
This is a pretty big deal because Latinos were already splitting in ways that mirrored Anglo voting trends (gender divide/evangelical/military service were prime determinants of voting R). The educational divide would further cement the parallels.
Oct 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This has been noted several times and there is an explanation for it. Brief thread
Sinema was very media-friendly, accessible and quotable as a liberal activist and then liberal D in the conservative AZ state legislature. But she had something of a revelation in 2006 when she teamed w an R colleague to fight a gay marriage ban.
Oct 5, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Coupla thoughts on the Sinema tapes. First, Sinema’s model is McCain but with both reporters and pressure groups ambushing her on video she’s waaaay more disciplined and willing to stay silent.
Second, no coincidence the most aggressive are immigration activists. (1/2)
These activists usually feel their own lives and those of their families are on the line. Also, their greatest success, DACA, came from an unrelenting pressure campaign on Obama that a lot of Ds at the time bristled at. (2/2)
Sep 29, 2021 • 40 tweets • 5 min read
In the most Colorado redistricting process ever, the state's 12 commissioners are discussing their exercise routines on Zoom while waiting for commission staff to compile their votes for a new congressional map.
If the commission requires more than one round of voting to meet the 8 of 12 threshold to approve a congressional map, well, it's been 45 mins since they cast their 1st votes and we still don't have a count.
May 3, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Diaz is gonna blow this, isn't he?
Yep
Sep 24, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"According to booking data from TripIt, a travel organizing app, Denver is the third-most popular fall travel destination this year." Seriously? Don't you people have somewhere better to go?! washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/de…
Denver is fine but if you're gonna come here you should really just keep driving west and visit the mountains. Denver is your typical pleasant western lifestyle town, but the mountains are just amazing.
Jordan clarifies in the thread that he's just looking for a nudge like endowing a lab at University of Wyoming, but....this isn't gonna spark an exodus of blue staters. Have you been to southern Wyoming? It's an acquired taste.
Sep 23, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Otoh, R campaigns, including the Trump campaign, are pushing their voters to cast ballots by mail, indicating that campaign professionals believe it is the optimal way for their side to run up the numbers (which it generally is)
Typically about 1% of mail ballots are rejected and there isn't a big partisan difference in who votes by mail, so that doesnt matter much. But mail voting tends to increase turnout by well over 1%, so it's a net gain in participation.
Sep 22, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Actually the Supreme Court has been conservative for decades
This isn't subjective. There's been a conservative majority for a long time
Sep 21, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The parties don't get to pick their ideological formation. They exist in response to societal trends and the Ds' shifts are due to an increasing college-educated population clustering in metro areas that are also magnets for immigration + job growth.
The fact that this coalition is now a majority of the US population and increasingly a majority of presidential election voters but not well distributed for the electoral college/Senate is a feature, not a bug, of the coalition.
Sep 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Only 1 in 4 Latinos views themselves as a person of color. Why Latino politics isn’t what you think nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opi…
A crude assumption that Latinos will essentially replicate the black political experience and be a voting bloc that can be rallied by ethnic solidarity underlies a lot of assumptions about the demographic. It is a very big error.
Sep 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The vast, vast majority of western forests are controlled by the federal government
State Forests are a thing back east, including in Trump's (and my) native NY, but they don't really exist in the west. It's all federal.
Sep 9, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My youngest is watching Spider-Man: Far from Home as a reward for a hard day of online school and big plot hole becomes apparent on partial 3rd viewing: How does Mysterio know that Peter will be on a summer trip to Venice to set the plot in motion?
Also the whole fantasmagorical illusion sequence is kinda impossible for them to have whipped up in the 8 hours or so it takes Peter to get to Berlin.
Aug 28, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is very useful — and note that the risks in the US are 10x those in the UK ft.com/content/176b9b…
So, by these calculations, in the typical state, the typical American has a 1 in 100,000 chance of a bad outcome from covid.
Of course the very wide regional difference of infection makes it hard to generalize.
Aug 19, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Seriously Idaho you had better backdrops than this
Scenic states gotta represent
Aug 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Why making it harder to vote by mail can really bite Republicans in some states
The political CW is that if you make it harder to vote by mail you diminish marginal voters and increase the power of LVs. That worked for GOP when it’s voters were affluent college grads. But those are largely D voters now, which is why LV screens may favor Biden in white states
