The BlueSwan Basement of Absurd & Ignorant Posts VIII

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What would qualify as an ordinary midterm though? Like 1970 or 1990? It's actually hard to find more neutral midterms because even though the seat flips were kind of low in those elections, Democrats actually won the House popular vote by decently large margins. They just had so many seats already that it didn't make much difference. If Democrats won by those margins this cycle, it would be a bonafide wave.

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Any argument that considers states as meaningful and independent entities is still colossally stupid. We're at a point with mass communication, mass culture, nationalized politics, etc. that there's no reason to consider states as truly independent collections of constituencies rather than some arbitrarily binned groupings of people. Put another way: we're at a point where most states have a large amount of variance within their constituencies, to the point that the differences among states are becoming meaningless so long as you know a person's education level, race, and gender. There isn't much difference in the political leanings or the between Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport Iowa, or between Fairfax County, VA and Prince George's County, MD, between Wendover, Nevada and West Wendover, Utah, etc. But the current representation system we have treats ridiculously them as totally separate political entities. So, any type of system which tries to do some fair weighting of "states" as if they had some sort of meaningful political identity is trying to weight something which isn't well defined enough to be meaningful. Keeping a system of political representation which is based on trying to balance out some weird political variables that don't really exist is horrible and indefensible when it creates massive inequalities in other ways, e.g., giving the 40 million people of California as much political representation in a major body of Congress as a state that's almost 1/80th its size.

I don't really care about the Connecticut Compromise. It's a product of a bygone era with incredibly different political needs and realities, and its mere existence isn't a sufficient argument for why it should continue to be followed. It's telling that all arguments in favor of incredibly biased systems of proportionment are justified by arguments that are ultimately "this is the way it is", or "this is the way it was", without ever giving an argument for why that is right or desirable.

Basically this and everything Solid and AndyHogan have said in this thread: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=308408.msg6570518#new

Damnit! You found and exploited my debating weak point - passive-aggressively quoting me in the bad-posts thread without addressing any of my arguments. This has always been my rhetorical Achilles heel - it's why I was no good in my high school debate club.

At first, I thought you went on some rampage through that thread, so I opened it and looked for your posts there, and what do you know, that was your only post.

It's one thing for CE to disagree, and another thing to put this in the bad posts gallery. What on EARTH is wrong with the post? It's actually a fairly good argument that not only explains why states are nothing like they used to be and do not serve the same purposes (more or less), but also points out the rather hollow arguments against reforming the Senate: "this is the way it is." Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but I think a good chunk of the resistance to this from conservatives is probably tied to their knowledge that the Senate favors their interests considerably, by design, and so their minds just naturally form a protective barrier around the current idea of the Senate, almost inseparable from their natural inclination towards self-preservation. It's not even just the Senate, you can see this play out with all sorts of things, from basic rules on voting (eg voter suppression) or even something that should be as simple as investigating fraud. Not only are there crickets from the GOP on the NC fraud case, but hacks like 2016 popping in and throwing in "DEMOCRATS STEALING ELECTIONS." It's almost comical how reliable the conservative response is to these things.

This is also the reason why Senate reform will probably never pass without Democrats controlling the number of states required to amend the constitution. Republicans in their current form will never, ever agree to a system that weakens their influence, no matter how little the old system makes sense or how unfair it is. Everything the GOP has done up to this point indicates they would rather rule a deeply unfair and unequal system than compete in a fair one. And if one ever wavered in such a thought, the rash of lame duck power stripping bills all but reaffirms it.

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I've served in the Atlas War On Trolls. I like to think of it as my own personal Vietnam.

Internets troll do not kill people.
Wars have killed millions of people throughout history.
Making such a comparison is extremely disrespectful towards those who died in war.

Okay Mr Serious

I forgot you're all business, all the time

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Warren is a tool to divide the base. She didn't go to Dakota when it was needed, stayed out of 2016 for fear of angering Clinton, didn't support M4A till every other presidential candidate did & is seemingly open to more moderate ways. She has also said she doesn't rule out PAC money for the GE.

Add to the fact that has poor temperament & massive electability concerns. How is cop Kamala Harris any worse than Warren? Apart from achieving nothing, Warren cant even get elected. And someone with 0 political courage is a failure.

Translation: I only want Bernie and I'm annoyed someone else on the left is doing well