The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Technocracy Timmy]

Dude, I'm sure it's a joke in your mind or whatever, but comparing someone who lost family members in the Holocaust to the Nazis in any context is about as low as it gets (almost every other branch of the paternal side of my family except for my grandfather's ended up dying in Nazi death camps, if by great-grandfather hadn't come to the U.S., he'd have been gassed too).  I'm not going to use the sorts of words that are appropriate for describing someone like you b/c frankly, you're not worth the energy it'd take to hate you.  I'll just say that your post was disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself, not that I expect you to possess the level of empathy that'd require.  Now kindly stop pissing on the memory of my dead relatives.

It's terrible that your relatives died in the holocaust but it's also terrible that you're using those relatives as a prop to find an easy way out of the argument by playing that "card". He's not making that connection in any way and I think that's transparently obvious. One image was Stalin and another image was the Iraqi propaganda minister guy. I understand the appeal of jumping at the opportunity to play the victim in an opportunity like this but I think everyone can agree our discussion is not nearly so serious as to warrant your complaints! In the context he's obviously calling you out for being a hackish mouthpiece for Kalwejt and other moderators, which it's transparently clear you are doing so. You're making senseless appeals-to-authority arguments and it's frankly disgusting that you're tarnishing the memories of Holocaust victims by using their memories to shield yourself in a barely even tangentially related internet argument.

Kal did something wrong and your defenses of him have no merit, that's all there is to it. There is no reason to bring victims of genocide into this argument at all. I think it would be a good idea if we all took a step back and relaxed for a moment.

Comparing a relative of many holocaust victims to Nazis over opinions on moderation is completely unnacceptable, regardless of context.

For me context matters. My maternal great grandparents suffered through the Holocaust and they made Nazi jokes even in their elderly years. I have blonde hair and blue eyes so I would occasionally get the aryan joke thrown at me growing up.

My attitude is that if it's a joke or being facetious then no harm no foul and I'll even play along. But if they're actually serious about it then I get upset.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I feel like using this poster is almost cheating but,

As I said, this is not unexpected. We saw this coming months ago. Trump's political base is reliant on coal and old economy jobs. Not the new economy, which overwhelmingly voted against him. Why did we expect him to try to cater to voters who would vote against him no matter what and donors who are going to donate to his opposition, no matter what?

Is it right? No. But we should understand, again, why Trump did this. The vast majority of GOP Congressmen and political leadership are situated in areas that are, again, Old Economy type areas and overwhelmingly white, not exactly educated types. (Of course, I'm generalizing but). The GOP ideology is situated in winning blue collar white areas as the bulk of their political support.

GOP money comes from Texas and the oil industry and the South, not California, not Silicon Valley, or renewable energy, either, which is important. There was no money in support of staying in the deal.

This is what it boiled down to, no matter what. Trump sees no political upside to staying in Paris, and he's a politician. The system doesn't reward long term strategy that has you damaging the people that you voted for. That's not our Constitutional system.

One key mistake that Democrats have made here is that they never bothered to help these areas make the transition to clean energy and high tech areas and relied on people from San Francisco and New York to make the climate deal. That really shrunk the base of support of people who would aggressively push for us staying in the deal on the GOP side. It was a very partisan deal, in that analytical sense.

Why do you ask blue collar white voters to put their (shrinking but still there) jobs at risk with no support to transition to new jobs and towns to try to make a bold leap without economic support? They voted in fear against the deal in a couple of areas.  

[Technocracy Timmy]

It's gone, and seeing as only flatlanders have answered this, I figured I would make my bimonthly guest appearance to tell you why.

First of all, educated, wealthy/upper-middle class voters are trending hard Dem, which bodes very poorly for the GOP in the longterm here. Jefferson County (Denver's west suburbs( just 12 years ago was a reliably Republican county. Four years ago it was a bellwether. Now it leans more Dem than the country. The same is true for Larimer County (Fort Collins), Broomfield City & County, and Arapahoe County (Denver's southeast suburbs). These are all highly educated areas with lots of people working in tech, gov't services, and at one of the universities.

The GOP has made up for this by picking up the sort of disaffected white (and Latino actually) working class voters that won them Michigan and Pennsylvania, which is why Weld, Pueblo, and Adams Counties have swung hard to the right. This has allowed them to create the illusion of close races (and I say illusion because the state's PVI has slowly ticked leftwards despite this, more on that in a second), but is a dangerous place to be in because Pueblo County and Weld are economically depressed and barely growing in population, leaving them only with Adams County, which has a booming youth and Latino population that thus far has not turned out to vote largely because the AdamsCo Democrats have been under criminal investigation nearly a dozen times in the past decade, and are therefore treated as toxic by the state party who invests no resources there.

Meanwhile, not only are Jefferson, Arapahoe, Larimer, and Broomfield growing very quickly, but so are Denver and Boulder. And on top of that, the growth is disproportionately young and educated. Denver will add 100k people this decade, many of whom are fleeing the industrial Midwest precisely to live somewhere more progressive. Boulder also has become a magnet for educated young professionals. For Republicans to compete with the demographic wave hitting the state, they would need to be growing their base population at the same rate, which they are not.

Meanwhile, the COGOP is constantly in the press for myriad scandals, and is beholden to a Colorado Springs primary electorate that prioritizes social issues over economic issues, leaving candidates like Buck and Glenn. Cory Gardner literally was their bench, and even he is almost certain to go down in 2020 because: A. he has a record now, and can no longer lie about being semi-pro choice, pro-climate science, etc. (and the polling firm I worked at showed that his lying about those things did get him votes) and B. he has had horrible press for the past 6 months because of Trump, who is more unpopular here than he is nationwide by a margin that should scare the Repubs. Basically, their brand has been tarnished, and economic moderates are increasingly either voting Libertarian or Democrat.

Now, the GOP has a big base here (no pun intended) with ex-military, evangelicals, and rural voters (esp. in Eastern Colorado), so they can muster a decent turnout. But as long as Democratic turnout isn't anemic, they still can't win (at the gubernatorial/Senate/presidential level--they can still win row races because of Dems not voting down the ballot and ancestral Jeffco Republicans wanting "balanced" government). Looking back at 2016, the turnout likely was low, because Clinton was a bad fit for the state and had low approval ratings and Bennet also has never been very popular, and still with minimal national investment, she beat Trump by a respectable margin here (and don't get me started on Darryl Glenn--he over performed, but Bennet would have won by an 8 point margin with Arn Menconi's supporters).

Is CO gone forever for the GOP? No, but I also don't believe that Mississippi is gone forever for the Dems. However, the demographic reality is that Denver and the Metro is a hipster haven for intellectuals fleeing the Midwest, and those are the exact kinds of people trending D. It would take a lot to change for the GOP to win CO, and assuming that it won't, CO is out of reach for them at this time.