Coups, Counts and C***S, Chapter 2: The Coup that Never Was (Update from Brutus)

[Blair]

Chapter Two: The Coup that Never Was

Introduction

The plane circled over Nyman. The fog had enveloped the runway, and denied a safe landing... but the phone still worked.

'We need to... no I know... suicidal. It would be like a massacre, but we're going to get massacred in the voting booth. I'm not going to let him become President. He's a complete lunatic, and he's conned half our party into voting for him.

Where's our candidate? We've not had a single campaign event in the last week. Not a single rally. No ads have gone out, no speeches and absolutely no outreach- we're going to lose. We've not spent the last year grinding our balls off to get Labor into this position, only for our nominee to f**k it up in the last week.

I'm chair- I've told him how to campaign. I've told him who to contact, and how to do it. We've had nothing. If someone is going to throw a bomb in the bunker and take him out it's me.

I'll do it when I land.... no... I don't know about rules... no well nothing probably... I'm Chair, and an ex-president, and I know him. Either he campaigns, or he's off the ticket.''

[Blair]

Part 2: The backstory

Imagine LBJ. Imagine Donald Trump. Add in the moral compass of an opportunist infection, and you had our opponent in 2017- DFW.

A relentless, obsessive, morally bankrupt Texan who had seduced the Labor Party. I say that with a great deal of respect; DFW remains the single most effective opposition player I've seen in the game. But all the actions that followed came from who Labor were facing.

I've tended to be quite good at not letting people in this place annoy me; but I became rather obsessed with stopping DFW from becoming President. After his weird 4D chess with his independent run (which he claimed then I torpedoed- if I actually did, I take the praise now) he now had the federalist nomination- President Yankee, like me, was battered by a eunuch of a presidency and didn't run.

I'd stepped down from the Presidency in January- under the Potomac agreement.

I was now simply Labor Chair, and boy was I pissed off. Firstly with myself. I had decided not to run in February 2017- because I didn't want to face another election epic against Yankee, and because I feared losing. God knows how much time I spend running in October 2016, and I simply lacked the mental energy to run properly- so I bowed out.

Now someone with better memory, or who is less lazy will know what happened before the Feb 2017 election but Labors 2017 nominee was Speaker Never Again. I'll give a quick background for newbies below

Speaker Never-Again

One of my close allies in the game, who had endorsed my suicide run in 2016 see more and who was one of the best legislators in the game.

As Speaker of the House he'd overhauled the tax code completely; and led a session of Congress which wiped out about 6 months worth of backlogged bills. He was one of the more talented figures within Labor, and I supported him running for President in February.

I thought he was going to win...

February 2017 Election

IIRC Labor had an advantage in the rolls in 2017; I'd brought in large chunk of new players, we were at historic strength in both the House and Senate, and had a large core of active players. Then came across DFW.

I think DFW was Governor (?) of the South; but had served as Secretary of the Interior. Newer players will find it funny but he was a shameless right wing hack who would put the federalists first, except when he could put his ego first.

Like most old feuds I can't actually remember what DFW did, or said, or didn't do- I just remember believing that if he became President it would be a colossal disaster (and who can forget as a federalist he resigned to let his VP start WW3, and then get Fghtan to become President without ever getting a single vote)

But our plan was simple- we contact Labor, and undecided voters. We run an active campaign. Our internal polls, ran by Clyde (the best internal pollster in the game) had us at 50%. We had Southern Gothic, a character in himself (one of the many people who inspired the title of my memoir) as VP; and we seemed pretty steady.

Then the campaign stopped; we didn't get responses from PMs. Never-Again didn't do any speeches, or any PMs- despite us giving him the mastersheet I created ( a huge excel document with every Atlasia voter, and their history, which I used in 2016)

On top of that DFW, whilst no doubt sweating in a basement in Texas, was sending about 1000 PMs a day to every single voter, in most cases talking about absolutely nothing, charming- working the rope line. We saw normally loyal people endorse him- people on the left where endorsing a Trump voting federalist hack.

And our nominee did nothing.

I told Nev how concerned we were. How things needed to change, and what a good campaign looked like... but I could see it falling before my eyes.

[Blair]

Part 3: That evening in the IRC

The Coup itself

The first rule of Atlasia back then was that you went onto IRC to do the dirty work- I meet with another senior figure in Labor (who can out themselves if they want) to discuss what to do. This was less than 10 days before the election- do you know how batsh**t this was going to be?

I wanted Nev off the ticket. One of my closest allies, and friends with the game. I was going to knife him in the back 10 days before an election.

It was completely unprecedented- there was no rule within the Labor Party to replace a nominee. We didn't even have someone ready to run instead.

I couldn't wield the blade, and then run myself- it would have looked awful. The only two people who could have ran, and won where Truman, and Adam- I knew neither wanted to run, so I was at a loss.

No rules. No Nominee. No Chance.

I backed down.

But it's still amazing looking back how close I came to trying to force out Labors nominee; and surely this was a sign that I'd lost my mind as Labor chair? Doing this to anyone was sh**tty, but doing this to someone who had backed me multiple times? Awful.

Sane voices carried the day. I didn't do it. I was talked out of it. I told only two people I believe. I have no idea how many people know, or knew about this... although writing this I do wonder.... should I have done it?

The Result

Speaker Never-Again lost the 2017 February Election.

Despite a last week of panicked campaigning, where everyone came together, and where Nev did campaign- we lost.

We got beaten by someone who'd been in the game for only 6 months; and he'd done it by winning a lot of centre-left voters. It would have been a huge gut punch if it was some Marco Rubio clone but this was DFW. Someone who was completely erratic, extremely ideological and who was ready to kill Labor. (ironic huh?)

I think looking back it really shows my flaws as chair- a better Chair would have either got rid of Never-Again, taken the flak and got someone else to run, or they would have ran a better campaign. Even though there is only so much you can do without the nominee- I dithered, launched a half assed coup, and then called my troops back before they left the barracks, and then watched as the regime fell.

[windjammer]

Who was the older laborite? If that was me I don't remember so I dont think that was me lol

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Who was the older laborite? If that was me I don't remember so I dont think that was me lol

I think that's referring to me, though admittedly my memory is fuzzy as well.

[Terry the Fat Shark]

I was in a 2nd story apartment btw, not a basement


Errr I do think you are remembering a couple things the wrong way though. I was never SoIA (well I am not, but wasn't then), but I was Southern governor yeah.

Also, I didn't run on any sort of trumpist platform and I was most certainly not a trumpist, I just voted for him because I hated hillary at the time. Also, when I was running for southern governor I ran on single payer healthcare for example, so I focused on my leftist policies (with a dash or pro-life for people like cashew, which rings true today) and that is what got me over the line, not "friendship" but focusing on the right policies, hope that helps!

Also I don't think you should feel too bad about all of that, it is still a game no matter how seriously we both took it back then.

[Terry the Fat Shark]

idk if posting your own atlas pm's is against the tos... I crossed out the name of who I sent it to....

just for a little background, that is the gist of the pm's I sent to left wingers.

The link was....  https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=258251.0

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A couple of points. I think a large source of the problem with NeverAgain, is underscored by your first paragraph. It paints a very rosy picture of NeverAgain's record and ignores some things that were glaringly obvious to us across the aisle.

To begin with when he was Mideast Governor as I recall, he forgot to hold an election. - Understandable, reset was just around the corner and all.

But then...

As Speaker he went the entirety of December 9th - 22nd of 2016 without making a single post on the AFG board, while making 91 posts across the rest of the forum. Now you say he cleared a backlog, maybe he did in the joint session, but he slipped away big time in the third and fourth Congresses. I recall sending messages to you, when I was your Vice President, expressing concern over the situation in the House.

When I became President, the Fourth Congress became so bad that that we almost had secession crisis simply because Congress was so dysfunctional and unable to move forward.

The pattern continued. He became Southern Governor and then he disappeared leading to his removal from office.

NeverAgain was always very inconsistent with his focus and activity.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As for me not running, the simple fact of the matter I was I didn't have the numbers to win. DFW won by flipping radicals that Adam had brought back to vote in October and with increased Labor recruitment since then my ability to flip old timers I had connections with was swamped. Only DFW could have had that level of success flipping the newer Laborites.

And DFW is telling the truth, he was not using "frienship wink wink" he used issues like health care, infrastructure, his non-interventionist foreign policy etc to flip voters. It didn't help Labor that both Blair and maybe NeverAgain (not as sure about him) were more interventionist compared to say Adam and this created an opening that DFW could exploit as well.

As for the 4D chess, part of that was unplanned and I was pissed both the first time he jumped in as an indy and the second time he jumped in as a Fed. The second time occurred while my hard drive was fried and by the time I got back on it was too late. That being said, I realized two important things 1) Never's inconsistent record as Speaker and 2) Only DFW had a chance at flipping the Atlasforum types and the best way that he could accomplish that was if it looked like he was f@%king me out of the Presidency.

I didn't have time either to put in the effort required for a Presidential run, but I did have such for House (only required 12/13 votes back then for quota) and could cut deep enough to maybe push us over the top, so I dropped down and worked to flip House votes to myself and the other Conservative candidates. Somehow, we pulled it off, which surprised me at the time. I expected I would have to be throwing deck chairs at the Speaker to get him to wake up, instead I ended up the Speaker. I worked with Never to revise the house rules, I created the bill format we used today with the vote links included, pressured and prodded the Senate to follow suit and we managed to dodge a bullet that could have sank the reset less than a year in.

[Adam Griffin]

There were arguably two in-game events that broke me. The first was the totality of my (first) Presidency (and a good deal of it was outlined in my post in Chapter 1): the minutiae of having to serve as a bipartisan caretaker and a savior, all during a period where I knew everything would be erased momentarily for the new incarnation of the game that I (ironically) had been fighting for for years; when you are such a partisan character, it really was a numbing experience to be President and have to serve as somebody entirely your opposite in terms of impulses.

The second was the upset of February 2017; it appeared to me (at the time) that it was so entirely in the bag that I wasn't even involved at all in the run-up to the election. My whole thought process was "how can we lose this election? we have the biggest [on-paper] advantage ever!". Arguably the election with which I was the least engaged; boy, did I learn...

[Adam Griffin]

As others, I have a hard time recalling specific instances of this particular campaign (especially since I was tuned out at this point more than any other in the past 7 years - the two October 2016 ties really wore out what little my prior Presidency hadn't), but it was on my radar in the final days that NeverAgain didn't actually campaign publicly or privately in the final stretch. Apparently he did initially contact our target voters, but he never followed up and/or pestered them to the extent that DFW did (or at all), and just assumed they would be there for him. Combined with the lack of public presence (which used to be a damning concept, mind you; not anymore; see: June 2019), the final few days before the booth opened were a wake-up call, and at that point, I became aware of the situation the Left was in. However, by then, it was too late to do much of anything about it.

At any rate, NeverAgain lost a dozen or more voters that he should have carried; what was a single-digit loss raw vote-wise should've been a double-digit win. What made it so easy for me to tune out of this race was that it was such a slam-dunk on paper that any Generic Labor should have been able to run and win by single-digits without ever even sending a personal message. If there was any election post-Dissolution (2012) that Labor should've won based on registration stats alone, it was this one. However, DFW was not a Generic Federalist, and we overestimated the number of people who wanted to "Smash the Trumpists". This was the (beginning of the) end for "Old Labor" - in more ways than one.

[Blair]

Who wants to see the PM logs from this coup?

[Sestak]

Who wants to see the PM logs from this coup?

Oh, yes please.

[Wells]

idk if posting your own atlas pm's is against the tos... I crossed out the name of who I sent it to....

just for a little background, that is the gist of the pm's I sent to left wingers.

The link was....  https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=258251.0

You certainly tried less for my vote. I think it was a single sentence about high speed rail or something? I used to be in the bad habit of deleting old PMs so I don't have it anymore.

My favorite pm from you was the one in Russian.

[Terry the Fat Shark]

idk if posting your own atlas pm's is against the tos... I crossed out the name of who I sent it to....

just for a little background, that is the gist of the pm's I sent to left wingers.

The link was....  https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=258251.0

You certainly tried less for my vote. I think it was a single sentence about high speed rail or something? I used to be in the bad habit of deleting old PMs so I don't have it anymore.

My favorite pm from you was the one in Russian.

I think I hit you up a few times on mibbit though lol

[Blair]

The ego strikes again

I've been kicking myself for the last week for not running this time around as I could have beaten DFW easily, if I carried the coalition that supported me+combined with the new recruits.

Never-Again simply hasn't done enough GOTV for indies/UA voters, and there's only a certain amount I can do as chair when they need to be hearing from Never-Again. It will be another stressful weekend as usual.

I'll be speaking to others about it- but we'll have the same Senate split of 4/6 and we should keep the House which means that even if DFW wins we'll have a good lock on him.

I think our best bet would be to go for parliamentary Atlasia- if we get it going quickly we could have it up and running by April/May

They’ll be a bonus chapter on just what I had planned on abortion after February

This is exactly what I was afraid would happen. The Labor campaign is practically invisible right now; apart from a sarcastic jibe about annexing Cuba, NeverAgain hasn't made a serious policy proposal all week, which is why the party that sponsored this monstrosity is getting away with their "we're so moderate on social issues" pitch. If you're right and little progress is being made to sway independents behind the scenes, DFW is going to win and the Feds just might flip the House as well.

Advice from a senior labour figure

Basically, it's too late to throw somebody off of the ticket. It'd be a disaster in terms of the upset it would cause and it might make the end result even worse. Unless there was just some maniacally well-liked workhorse of a Laborite to replace the candidate, it'd cause confusion in all sorts of ways and probably undermine what little GOTV has already been done. All it'd take is 1 or 2 people not paying attention (but who paid attention prior) and writing in the original slate to dramatically increase chances of loss.

I'm afraid the cake is baked for this election as far as the players go. I do know that DFW is behaving like Cris in that he is messaging everybody: hell, I got a message from him... If anything, I'd say that trying to scare NeverAgain into thinking that he could be replaced on the ticket (without actually intending to do so) if he doesn't start GOTVing might be something worth trying, but damn if you'd have to walk a fine line with that and it could totally backfire.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

DFW literally was contacting everyone. He even messaged Adam as I recall, which thoroughly alarmed me because if Adam was slumbering I thought it best not to wake him up.

The whole push for Parliament during early 2017, which your PMs make reference to, was infuriating to me because a lot of it was being driven by the sheer incompetence of the fourth Congress, the same one which passed just three pieces of legislation while I was President and motivated calls for secession. Both chambers were still using Nix's pre-reset rules as a basis for their own and thus contradicted the Constitution and prevented the VP from doing his job. We carried far too much stuff over unchanged without reviewing the details. And on the other hand, we presumed a lot of stuff had carried over when it actually had not, including various election laws.

[YE]

DFW literally was contacting everyone. He even messaged Adam as I recall, which thoroughly alarmed me because if Adam was slumbering I thought it best not to wake him up.

According to what dfw said (well showed us) on Discord a few days back, not only did he message Adam, he tried to get him to defect parties lol.

[NeverAgainsSock]

Hi all! (Kal can delete this account afterwards - it was too much effort to try and track down or reopen my old account - apologies for the effort needed to do that though modteam!)

As I was doing my bimonthly lurk, I stumbled upon Blair's memoirs. I just thought it may be helpful to give my own perspective on the election and give a couple of reactions to the seeming revelations (at least to me) from y'alls comments. I always think it's important to have all sides of these things and all perspectives. Since I am not going to be defended by anyone on here, I guess I'll just break the rules to do it myself.

First I'll give my own (probably poorly remembered) recollection of the election, then secondly I will go through a couple of things that surprised me, and then third go through your comments, and finally a couple of things that I think should be said.

What happened as I saw it:
To give a couple of sentence primer on the election may be a disservice to all that went on in it, but frankly it's all I can solidly put together. As the timeline went, I believe there was a primary in Labor against close friends, then I had a seeming tug-of-war with DFW over SouthernGothic, who it probably would have made more sense for him to go with as DFW had been courting him for weeks. Also there was a rumor about threats against SG if he didn't join the ticket? Anyways, he did and then the whole Kingpoleon "B R U T U S" deal came into fruition. I'll admit that was a funny moment and I think DFW can agree. Basically, (Kingpo correct me if I'm wrong), Kingpoleon messaged both of us candidates with a couple of (frankly weird) policy proposals and demanded them as parts of our platform or else he would endorse our opponent. Or at least that was the message I received. It ended with something like "I can be your angel or I can be your BRUTUS", and knowing Truman's love of Shakespeare he got a big kick out of it.

Anyways for the actual campaign. It really seems like a blur after that stage. I do remember sending out a handful of PMs after the primary, showing off my ticket, asking for support. I, as many of you know from campaigning, didn't receive many replies. So, I just went along and did what ever I did during that time. I forget how it arose that I got the spreadsheet or the "Labor Bible", maybe Blair sent it to me immediately or a couple of days/weeks after the primary. Whenever it was, I had it. I do not consciously remember not campaigning over the next period of time. I do remember faintly, Blair kindly nudging me in the campaigning direction, however that was I believe around 10 or 12 days before the election (I may be entirely wrong here). However, my recollection is that I did immediately start sending out PMs to a lot of people... with many mistakes along the way. The biggest probably being my defiant stand for reproductive rights while PMing a solidly pro-life Lumine.

As I remember the last 10 days (weekend before election, week, and then election weekend), I was doing as much as I could. I did my, I think very good and well-formatted policy speeches (I did like 4, right?). I sent through the gambit of seeming swing voters. Did you catch that: SWING? What I didn't do, and frankly didn't feel that I needed to, was PM anyone/everyone I had already contacted in that post-primary phase. Especially the newcomers. As you have seen, that came to bite me in the buttocks, to quote an Alabaman war-vet.

On election weekend, I did continue to send out PMs, probably pretty lazily in comparison to DFW, but it happened nonetheless. Just for the record, this was a really REALLY close election, 61-58 (51.3 - 48.7). Smoltchanov said he actually flipped a coin, whether he did or not - different issue, but gives you a bit of perspective on the razor-thin margins we are working with. Now it wasn't tie-it-twice close, but still two votes close. It just so happens that those two votes were Laborites. I don't have the best memory about the whole timeline, but I do about voters. To that end, here are the 12 voters I think I could have gotten.

Devout Centrist, another newbie that I forgot to court. Federalist at the time, I believe, but still given DC's politics, it wouldn't have been super hard to discuss a vote for me. I was a little shy about messaging new Federalists, as you never want to wake an opponent's sleeping voter. But with hindsight I definitely should have.

TXGurl, good friend of Yankee's, but if I had messaged her earlier - I think it would have been a different outcome.

jdb, in the Federalist camp, but also in the AAD-Atlasia-memeing style crowd IIRC. Would have been tricky, but maybe I could have convinced him.

smoltchanov, I courted smolt HARD. Apparently so did DFW, but it was pretty stinging when he said "I flipped a coin and it went for DFW". Maybe I should have been stronger on currency reform.

NHI, considering NHI voted for Blair, this should have been a vote I could have gotten. I let it slip and by the time I contacted NHI it was probably too late. However, NHI voting for Blair would not make it an easy sell to vote for me.

Winfield, maybe an earlier contact would have been good, but Winfield will do what Winfield wants to do. I don't think he cared much who won, so it wouldn't have been too hard to have him stake his claim in my backyard for 3rd place vote, heh.

Snowguy, only thing I can say is that I should have contacted Snowguy more over mibbit, and/or used my AAD connections to bring him to my side. Or frankly just go to Minnesota, but that would take time away from other door-to-door campaigns I could have made. Anyhow, a potential, but not a given voter.

Pericles, I don't remember if and when I contacted him. This may fall into the my one campaign message versus the tsunami of DFW asks. Shoulda, coulda, woulda done it or done it earlier.

Miles, as a fellow Virginia Democrat, we did have a lot of lively discussions on the fate of our great state, so I should have contacted more. We have a difference of opinion on choice, but I think I learned quick after Lumine on that issue.

Finally, the big three:

DREWMIKE
ILLINIWEK
CASHEW

All three were seemingly staunch Laborites that voted for the other side. One was on our frickin' Congressional roster! I am quite sure that I did contact them early-on, but its quite possible I didn't, especially Cashew. Two were new and so that should have been a wakeup call, but I think for Illiniwek, it was/is quite possible I just took them for granted that they would vote for me. Life ain't fair, take nothing for granted.

All that being said. I am proud of what I did accomplish. There were a couple of swing voters that I was able to pull to my side, that if I had been "replaced" wouldn't have followed. Even in the face of mass campaigning from my opponent, my slow moving campaign yielded nearly 60 votes from all across the game. I learned a lot about the game, and about what not to do in it. And I did go on to win in the South and flip their chamber of delegates. We reengaged some voters, and I brought a couple of those that I had lost in the Presidential election to my side and sometimes the Labor side in the Gubernatorial and future elections. I took loss gracefully, and sadly became pretty good at writing concession speeches to DFW.

That's my story, on to yours.

Things that surprised me:
In my blanket of naivety, I had no (or at least no definitive memory of) the suggestion that I should be pushed off the ticket. Even after, if I had remembered it happening I must have blocked it out. I feel like I am on Blair the therapist's chair of hidden and blocked traumas. I also have a sh**t memory, so that probably contributes to that as well, hah. That makes the whole post "Kick Nev out of Labor" thing seem a bit more fluid, even if WJ wasn't the start here. Anyways, that was the biggie. Another thing that surprised me was the seeming unanimity behind this proposal, at least among leadership. It does hurt me to know how many people were behind my expulsion from the ticket. That's okay. I'm a big boy now, not a 15/16-year-old child haha!

I also do disagree with the notion that a "better" Labor chair would have seen extreme success in switching candidates to Truman (who I love, but also lost a hard-fought Presidential Campaign - including 3 voters that actually voted for me - angus, LibertarianRepublican, & SWE) or Adam (who as stated was pretty out of it during the season) halfway through the election season. Another candidate from the get-go may have won, I say that as it was never going to be a given. No election is. However, not only would you have pissed off me, the candidate, likely permanently (BRUTUS!), but anyone you replace would have been weighed down by tremendous baggage. Someone, unelected by the party, is now its nominee because the Chair wanted it? I think that would have been atrocious. And a talking point for the opposition even if the candidate runs and wins the election? Believe me, I have Monday-night quarterbacked myself. But framing it as "I was being nice to a friend by allowing them to run as the nominee of a party that they were duly elected to represent, instead of pushing them off" is a bit of a too-cute-by-half moment. I will not go down as the greatest candidate for President the world has ever seen, quite obviously. I made many mistakes. But it a moment when the Federalists were all in on DFW, my party was contemplating kicking a longstanding party veteran like me off the ticket. I can understand why you did it. I freely admitted my multitude of mistakes above. But I just think that saying or implying that the only reason you didn't knock me, as a grave threat to the party, is because I was a "friend" does a disservice to the work that I did along the way. I may have been naive, but I wasn't stupid. To my recollection I never got a huge kick in the pants or advantageous strategy session. If I was a pinky-toe nail away from being kicked off the ticket, I think I should have been notified about that and the severity thereof and then we focus on next steps.

Additionally, I read through DFW's chat logs and I am surprised at the veiled and not-so-veiled homophobia that was thrown behind-the-scenes in the campaign. The little snippet I am referring to is a claim that I believe Potus made that I was able to get Smilo's vote due to my sexuality. Completely untrue. Smilo had been someone I would consider a friend for closer to a year, although we have different tastes in almost everything. True that I did ask him for a vote on numerous occasions, but he knew me as a person, not for just a part of my sexuality. He didn't/doesn't really care about Atlasian politics, and I did.  I think Yankee was entirely joking in his whole "I've been requesting votes from gays for longer than you've been born"  - maybe a little un-PC for my tastes, but this was a chat log that was not supposed to reach the light of day.

Y'alls comments:

As Speaker he went the entirety of December 9th - 22nd of 2016 without making a single post on the AFG board, while making 91 posts across the rest of the forum.

I genuinely don't know how you remember the exact number and timeframe. You, sir, either have a fantastic memory or have your old player attack list on the ready. I freely admit, again, that those two weeks were not my shining moment. I had school, sports, along with family time that I was focusing on and by December it began to feel like Atlasia was just work. Not fun. Work. And for 15-year-old me, homework was enough. So I just did what I usually do on the forum, minus checking in on Atlasia. By the end of the first week it become a vicious procrastination cycle, and since activity was down across-the-board, other than you and a select group of others, my incentive to focus on Atlasia instead of school was virtually non-existant. Once school let out, I was able to get back into the swing of things, and I think I did start to turn somethings around. I, along with you, wrote really model rules for the House and what became the Senate rules as well. Not an excuse, but an explanation.

The pattern continued. He became Southern Governor and then he disappeared leading to his removal from office.

Eh. Those two-and-a-half months were harsh. The weird BenKenobi and Fhtagn drama was beyond me. Anyways, we made some good things happen in my 2 and a half months. Civil Rights Reform, Fighting Hate, Supporting Energy Indpendence, etc. After Clyde lost, and with BenKenobi being an ever-present migrane, I just didn't want to do it anymore. So I just fizzled out. It was wrong of me to do, I get that. It's why being clear and mature about leaving is something I did the next time I left.

NeverAgain was always very inconsistent with his focus and activity.

K. Skipping over the 4 months that I returned, passed numerous pieces of well-worked, and bipartisan legislation, engaged in vigorous debate, and recruited 25+ new members as PUP Chair is fine - just be clear that you are doing it. I could be sporadic in activity. But when I was here, I think I was pretty on the ball.

And DFW is telling the truth, he was not using "frienship wink wink" he used issues like health care, infrastructure, his non-interventionist foreign policy etc to flip voters. It didn't help Labor that both Blair and maybe NeverAgain (not as sure about him) were more interventionist compared to say Adam and this created an opening that DFW could exploit as well.

LOL. I will never EVER understand this whole "interventionist vs. non-interventionist" BS. Name me one voter that flipped because of "interventionism" or "healthcare" or "infrastructure". They flipped because DFW sent them nice messages before I could or should have. Period - full stop. No one cares about actual real policies in the game, they care about how nice or close you are to them.

Being policy fluid and "friendship " is the only thing that gives conservatives a change in a game seemingly dominated by people of an opposing political vantage point.

but it was on my radar in the final days that NeverAgain didn't actually campaign publicly or privately in the final stretch.

K. I posted a campaign policy "speech" that the previous week and then one the final week and participated in two debates. My opponent did the same. I PM'd the "list" of swing voters. I'd say easily 40-50 people. It was not enough, and I should have done more. But it is patently false that I did not campaign publicly or privately in the final stretch. My public policy campaign outreach was seemingly equal to my opponent. My PMs, while not effective enough to win, were ever-present in the campaign.

NeverAgain lost a dozen or more voters that he should have carried; what was a single-digit loss raw vote-wise should've been a double-digit win.

I count three that I definitely "should have" carried. Probably two or three more that I could have if I had messaged earlier. The other 6 would have taken Dubya-level strategery to grab. Let me know in your opinion who the 12 "should have" carried voters are.

I know I sound snarky here, but I feel there is revisionism going on. I made many mistakes, but treating me like the half-wit who just fell into the nomination and just sat around is beyond the realm of reality and truth.

I am out of the game and glad to be so. Both times I had a "come to Dave" moment, that if I am spending hours and hours on this game only to get the Rodney Dangerfield's "I get no respect" feeling. I forget who said it to me, but the jist was "if you're this passionate about a game where everything is made up and nothing matters, then try it on something in real-life with real consequences." I've been happy with what Atlasia has taught me: a love of policy and policy analysis, the ups-and-downs of political organizing and campaigning, staying away from stupid dramatic affairs, and most importantly when to say "I'm done".

And with that, I'm done.

[Terry the Fat Shark]

FWIW if you are still there Pericles just wanted me to read his TL in order to get his vote (though we did discuss some policies) and yes ftr I did see you as a formidable opponent which is why I went so crazy in order to win said election

(Also I think Kingpoleon wanted both of us to give him and UA cabinet spots too)

[Pericles]

FWIW if you are still there Pericles just wanted me to read his TL in order to get his vote (though we did discuss some policies) and yes ftr I did see you as a formidable opponent which is why I went so crazy in order to win said election

(Also I think Kingpoleon wanted both of us to give him and UA cabinet spots too)

I think for February I only asked you to read my TL after I had voted.

[Lumine]

The biggest probably being my defiant stand for reproductive rights while PMing a solidly pro-life Lumine.

I remember that! I was pretty shocked to recieve a long campaign PM which was nonetheless remarkably separated from my actual beliefs or what might appeal to me. If memory serves right I did respond directly to point out some of what was wrong, but I remember telling someone else I was surprised at the whole situation.

[Blair]

Well this is the drama addition to the chapter we wanted isn’t it?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I remembered the dates because I was Vice President at the time and was checking everyone's activity in Congress and last post made etc. The reason it wasn't forgotten along with the others is because that it was the Speaker's activity. I also did credit your help in the rules changes in a recent thread, either in one of the previous memoir threads I think, either that or the one where bore and I went several rounds.

[Kingpoleon]

I did nothing wrong.

Link to the Crusader’s skewed against me:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=257230.msg5579883#msg5579883