The Kalwejt Foundation for the Promotion of Atlas Hilarity

[NOVA Green]

The idea that WV's and working class people, can't be persuaded to vote for left-wing parties, and left-wingers if there was a candidate that spoke to their concerns and to their ideals is ridiculous.

This....

Not sure if anyone watched the Town Hall with Bernie Sanders in the Heart of Coal Country West Virginia a few months back, but he got a pretty damn good reception in a heavily Trump County....

The "War on Coal" (To use the current Republican phrase) started when the Operators decided to crush the United Mine Workers of America back in the late '80s and early '90s.

This effort was successful.

After the '93 Strike against "Double-Breasting" (Disclosure--- which I helped support when I was living in Ohio at the time), which basically involved Operators opening up Non-Union Mines a few miles down the road from Union Mines, shifting production to Non-Union Mines in Montana and Wyoming as well, almost all of the Union Coal Mines were shut down within a very short period of time within the traditional Coal Belt of America.

The roots of this were in the full-frontal assault that the Reagan Administration waged on the practice known as "Pattern Bargaining".... Most of y'all might be a bit young to remember, or from parts of the country or social backgrounds where this wasn't that evident.

Additionally, instead of Union negotiations directly between employers and employees  within the United States, it turned into a scene where each new facility, needs to go through it's own union organizing drive to achieve collective bargaining.

So sure, the Coal Operators tried to pull the same crap that the large scale Timber companies did in the Pacific Northwest. They pocketed the money during the boom periods, and then when the respective Natural Resource economics go South they pull up the "Radical Environmentalists" and "Regulation Card"....

I have no sympathy for the operators, but a ton of love and understanding for the Coal Miners...

US Taxpayers are now paying the Bailout cost of the United Mineworkers medical funds, because those greedy fatcats pocked the money, and then many of the operators went bankrupt over the past few years, because of not decreased domestic demand for Coal, caused mainly by support for Fracking and Natural Gas by various administrations, but additionally by a dramatically declining international export market to China, which has a two tiered item of both decreasing the insane levels of smog in Urban areas caused by Coal Powered Plants, but additionally the US as a Coal supplier, has long been considered a secondary market, compared to much cheaper Coal from Australia....

So yes---- I think a lot of West Virginians know a lot more about the Coal Industry than most of us on this Forum. However, let's face the facts that both Democratic and Republican Administrations alike, haven't done right for the current and retired Coal Miners in the Coal Belt of Appalachia, that once was the power source behind our Industrial Revolution, the heat for our homes, and a decent paying dangerous Union job that most of us have no idea what it physically entails, not to mention all of those who died of "Black Lung".

[NOVA Green]

In "Are you addicted to the NYT polling project?":

I am extremely addicted. I haven't eaten, sleepen, or gone to class in 2 weeks. 5 super hot cuties wanted to hang out and i rejected all of them to constantly track every single change to NYT. My roommates have gotten really upset with how I smell like dogpoop, but I can't afford to move for 1 second because I need to know how long and strong the blue wave will penetrate the state of Virginia's wetlands

*** Rushes to check to see if there is a new poll posted from the Great State of Virginia ***

Crap, still only the completed poll from VA-07 that still shows a (47-43 R) win in the suburbs of Richmond.   

Can't believe the Brat is still ahead.   

[NOVA Green]

I wasn't quite sure where to post it because of the style of presentation (Atlas Hilarity or Epic Great Posts), since Cruz Will Win posted an awesome effort post, incorporating a wide variety of data, but simultaneously in a "straight-man" joke style it's hard to tell as you work your way towards the finale exactly which parts of the OP's work are deliberately an attempt of subversive humor, parody of Atlas Dems and Pubs alike, etc...

Either way, it was a brilliantly crafted post that both addresses the CW on Atlas, discusses the Dem Wave, and also talks about Dem "Pipe Dreams", and so many other items....

It's also extremely funny IMHO, despite so many deep points weaved into the author's narrative.

Just a week or two ago, amidst the height of the Kavanaugh/Ford hearings, chances of Republicans holding the House seemed to be increasing dramatically. The generic ballot had the Dem lead shrinking, down to the point where Republican Gerrymanders could maybe hold the House. Lindsay Graham was hailing himself as a hero to all self-respecting angry white males who like beer. People were talking about the Reps holding the House with the help of the gerrymander wall. That big batch of FOX Senate polls had just come out, including the ND-SEN one with Cramer up 53-41 (Oct 2).

Now a week or two later, the Trumptard base of the GOP has gotten what they want - a partisan psychotic hack on the court - and suddenly ... Republican numbers in the GCB are plummeting, starting to drop even below 40, and Democrats are posting more and more double-digit leads. Here are the 7 most recent polls on the 538 GCB (date on the graph is the date the poll ended), plus the most recent Yougov poll that just came out but they haven't entered in yet at the time I am posting this.



If you look at the trend here, it is pretty horrific for the GOP. The thing to notice is not just that the Dems are going up, but the Reps are going down even more quickly, at a shocking pace. The GOP is literally hemorrhaging support, like a GenX drunk hemorrhaging vomit after a hard night of heavy blackout drinking:



If you extrapolate the trend all the way to election day, it looks like this, with Republicans headed towards support of about 17% if current trends continue:



Don't get me wrong. It probably won't be quite that extreme, and the Republicans should eventually hit some sort of minimum floor of support like a wobbly alcoholic preppy falling flat on his face (maybe around 30% or so, the minimum deplorable amount???).

But regardless of if or when they hit a hardwood floor and regardless of whether they break their nose or not in the process of so doing, the implications could be horrific for the Republicans. You do not win elections - even elections rigged by gerrymandering and a tilted Senate map - with 40% (or less) of the vote. Remember, those Senate polls that seemed to be so favorable for the GOP all came out at the height of the Kavanaugh bump (the FOX news Senate polls all ended on Oct 2, the exact day when the charts above begin).

Because if the numbers hold, the Dems will have a commanding majority in the House - possibly even a veto-proof majority - and many of the close races in the Senate will break in favor of the Dems. Republican oil workers in North Dakota will not be allowed to vote because of an accidental Republican own-goal. There will be a historically low amount of ticket splitting, meaning that Republican losses will come up and down the entire ballot, not just in a few high profile races. The wipeout will be uniform and near absolute, with even Republican dog catcher candidates unable to differentiate themselves from Trump amidst a surge of angry female Democrats turning out at near-Presidential levels and voting straight ticket Dem.

It is also clear, that if this trend holds, even if Democrats do not pick up the Senate this year, they will defeat Trump and pick up the Senate in 2020, and then we'll have a Democratic trifecta. Democrats will pick up Governorships and State Legislatures across the nation, block and overturn Republican gerrymanders, and install gerrymanders of their own to lock in a permanent Democratic majority in the House for the rest of the decade. And as old White males increasingly die off and are replaced in the electorate by Millennials and Gen Z, things only get worse for the GOP.

For these voters, indelible in the Hippocampus is the uproarious laughter and the high fives of Republican Senators as they celebrated having rammed Kavanaugh through without conducting a proper FBI investigation, only a sham investigation in which the FBI was not allowed to follow up leads and forced by the White House to turn away tips and witnesses.



In other words, for these voters, this was a traumatizing experience that will stick in their memories permanently. They will remember it in a month when they go to vote. They will also remember it 2 years from now, and 30 years from now as well. Whereas for the Republicans, they got what they wanted and lack the traumatizing experience solidifying their memories. They will have forgotten all about Kavanaugh by the time of election day. Indeed, the nosedive in the polls shows that this process of forgetting is already well underway as the next news cycle attracts their attention.

All across the country, hordes of angry women are awakening each morning with a new sense of purpose. What was formerly confined within the boundaries of New Hampshire is spreading like an unstoppable contagion across the fruited plain, to the tremendous detriment of the Republican party. Republicans face the prospect of losing the women's vote - a majority of voters - by 30 points as in the CNN poll, spurred on by this profound sense of anger, rage, and anguish. I am not sure the Republicans understand what they have unleashed.

These voters are also worried that with Ginsburg surely retiring or god forbid passing (she’s up there in age) then you’re looking at 6-3 conservative majority - not just that but with at least 2 of those judges highly partisan. Whereas for Conservatives, they do not particularly care about Ginsburg, because they already have their majority. And Republican base voters are complacent, fooled by Trump's claims that Republicans are sure to hold the house, so they don't think they need to even bother voting.

I’ve always advocated for a split court. Four Conservatives. Four Liberals and 1 Centrist. Which is what we HAD until - well, until booze bag got confirmed.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=302399.msg6461629#msg6461629

[NOVA Green]

Seems like this thread could - and should - be instrumental for intelligence services in knowing whom to watch closely...

Context: Discussion of conversation about recent events in Venezuela....

The concept that somehow "intelligence services" "Should could be monitoring an Atlas thread closely for whom to watch"

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=311978.msg6645011#msg6645011

Sounds like David B is going on an Atlas Witch Hunt....

[NOVA Green]

The Republican Party is the party of the casual meth user with a record of Simple Battery, Aggravated Possession, and DUI. They dropped out of the 11th grade because they didn’t believe in birth control but somehow believed underaged sex was OK. Two years later they went to make $27 bucks an hour on the oil rig outside of Williston,ND on a 7 by 12 basis, 2 weeks on and two weeks off. That’s about 70k a year for manual labor two years later. They were good at and now 25, they hasLove 5 guys under them and they make what a typical small law partner or senior software engineer makes. About 10 or 11 a month. By 45, they will either have  an equal chance of having 10 million dollars, be homeless, or in prison.

The Democratic Party is the party of the speech and debate nerd or Soccer scholar who got into a place like Middlebury or Oberlin. They went into an ambitious major and yet still expected to manage it while ending up stoned on the quad or in a stranger’s bed every Sunday Morning. When they got their first “C” or “D” in their life in Calculus II their Freshman year, they became burnt out and thought the disappointing grade alone was enough to eliminate them from the graduate or professional school of their choice. They then decided to triple major in business, psychology, and political science and eventually they graduated in six years. After looking for a job for a year and only being able to get a job at a call center making 350 a week, they Ldecided to take the GRE and go for their MPA. The same thing happened after their MPA and now they are in their second year of law school at Arizona State (a school with a solid, but not stellar reputation) with an average rank. They are 30 years old and the most money they ever made was last summer at their 1L summer clerkship at a 40 lawyer firm in Phoenix making 20 bucks an hour. This person has an equal chance that by 45, they will be making what the person above them was making when they were 25, being a substitute teacher living on some kind of welfare, or doing something lucrative and sexy that they could have done all along.

The difference between the Bush Obama years and the Trump Biden years is the former is now more likely to be a bisexual Puerto Rican girl from a place like Osceola County and the later a ScotsIrish Baptist boy from a place like Cobb County.

Context: "Are the Democrats Now the Party of the Rich" thread.

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=413103.msg7769530#msg7769530