MAGA-teens harass Native American

[Calthrina950]

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

[Badger]

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

"many former Democratic voters who still strongly support trump." "Many?"
LOL.
How delusional can you possible be?

Perhaps if you bothered to look at the facts rather than throw out ad hominem attacks, I would hold you in higher regard. Places like Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Ohio, Michigan, Downstate Illinois, etc. have trended heavily Republican over the past two decades. Trump got more than 60% or 70% of the vote in many counties (i.e. McDowell County, West Virginia; Washington County, Pennsylvania) that Bill Clinton won as recently as 1996, and where John Kerry, as recently as 2004, was still getting decent numbers. West Virginia's Republican trend has been fueled, in part, by the defection of many voters from their prior Democratic allegiances. Yes, some of it is generational turnover, but there are still many alive who voted for Clinton, or Gore, or Kerry, or Obama, who are now Republican down the line.

1. Let's see how those places vote in 2022 offer a real comparison versus how many were Obama - Trump voters who were a combination of nearly two suspicious of Hillary and actually willing to buy Trump's photo populist message of bringing back industrial jobs out of desperation, compared to the royalist that he's actually governed like, before we make comparisons. Too. Even to that degree we need to look at overall demographic and economic changes in those areas. A lot of now deceased or very elderly former Union voters no longer have to rely on the Union further support so long as the pension checks keep coming in oh, and the middle class education lifestyle they were able to provide their kids is increasingly less dependent on Union membership which is perhaps the greatest known demographic Factor oh, perhaps only tied or a close second to having a postgraduate degree education, for determining whether or not white males vote democratic. In other words, the decrease of union jobs, especially in the private sector, is going to decrease the Democratic share of the vote unless Democrats adopt wholeheartedly the full right-wing social agenda of the Republican party. To which Democrats quite rightly across the board, including vast majority of white Democrats, say no thank you, we're not Republicans and proud of it.

 In places like that, unless the decrease white union membership is replaced by at least near equivalent levels of growth and minority voters and / or voters with higher education, the sheriff Democratic support is going to inevitably drop. On that point, I will gladly trade you running competitive in the shrinking population of Pittsburgh ring counties in Western PA ( outside Butler which is been Republican since time immemorial, and Westmoreland which is been largely Republican Suburbia more than Democratic blue-collar voters since the early to mid 90s) forgetting blowout margins in the rapidly-growing Philadelphia suburb counties, which let us remember we're only 20 years ago hardcore Republican vote Banks. No, that quotient can be undone when enough Obama voters are willing to give Trump's blue collar worker virtue signaling a chance out of desperation so much so that places like Erie and Centere counties become swing counties, plus Philadelphia suburbs don't swing hard enough for places like bucks to be more than a swing County, that Trump can pull it off by the skin of his teeth. Especially in our f***** up electoral college system where a couple tenths of a percent Victory margin in three states entirely undoes a couple million vote margin in California alone.

But why am I going into analysis about this? This is Calthrina being Calthrina being a right-wing hack on a repeating Loop of whataboutism, both sides do it maniac, and false equivalency Palooza. I guess since most other posters who will read this are not wastes of bandwidth like him, it's all worth it.

[7,052,770]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

[Badger]

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

[JA]

The high school has issued a statement sincerely apologizing to Nathan Phillips for the behavior of its students.  They also indicate that expulsions may follow.

Is America Great Again, yet?

I know you meant that sarcastically, but America was never great.

Respectfully disagree. Wow one can't deny the presence of all the various bills you described in American history, slavery, displacement in murder of indigenous people, Etc, they're ours not a country on the planet that does not have some of the same whores in its background. That does not make it acceptable in the slightest in some perverse type of whataboutism, of course. However, any real an honest assessment of America's place in the world and history needs to take an honest assessment and comparison of Americas failings in the area she described, as well as what he has conversely benefited the world with.

I will readily admit that America was never perfect, nor even close. But I also know that no other country I can think of was ever comparably closer. Perhaps our greatest stain on History, slavery, was to at least some degree, if certainly not a full Reckoning, paid for by this country by its willingness to waged its most bloody armed conflict in history against itself in order to exercise That Hideous institution stain. Even if there are cretons in lost causes today to still inexplicably venerate it.

The American Civil War was, of course, a war fought over the issue of slavery. However, in contrast to popular imagination and American mythology, it wasn’t, primarily, a moralistic crusade to rid America of an inhumane institution. Yes, there were abolitionists who were chiefly motivated by the realized social injustice of slavery, but they were not the majority, nor were they the leaders of our country.

What provoked the Civil War was the emerging industry and capitalism in America coming into intense conflict with the feudalistic holdover of slavery. They’re inherently contradictory systems of production; and capitalism couldn’t advance as it desired in America while the slaveholders retained the power that they wielded. That’s the same reason yeoman farmers and industrialists were largely unified in opposition to the expansion of slavery westward and the slaveholding powers’ attempts at seizing the federal government. It was a classic power struggle between free labor and free soil versus slavery. So long as the slaveholding, plantation system remained, then yeoman farmers, wage laborers, and capitalists would be at a disadvantage in the marketplace. Abraham Lincoln, along with his Republican Party, represented and arose from this milieu of the Northern middle and upper classes.

Lincoln was not particularly interested in emancipation, nor were Republicans concerned with the plight of the slaves. They promoted Reconstruction as a form of punishment and a way of breaking the plantation/slaveholder backed Democratic monopoly; they encouraged African American officeholders who’d be beholdened to their Northern benefactors and protectors, along with the exportation of “carpetbagger” businessmen into the South. When that system was eventually abandoned, they allowed the African American populace of the South to be thrown back under the jurisdiction of the former slaveholders; the legal, social, and economic system again crushed them as the North pulled out, knowing the system of slavery had been successfully abolished. Thus arose Jim Crow.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Even during the time of westward expansion, there were Americans resistant to further western conquest. The Mexican-American War, fought to expand American territory and the franchise of slavery, was an excellent example of that. There was little desire outside of slaveholders or yeoman farmers to expand American territory.

Nevertheless, it’s true that the vast, “empty” lands of America became a release valve for European states and a chance for European emigrants to escape their oppressive caste systems. However, upon arrival, most of the poorest immigrants, largely from Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe became an expendable source of cheap labor for American industrialists. As capital poured into America, so did the cheap labor of uneducated, impoverished European peasants who were thrust into wage labor in American factories, railroads, mines, and so on. Whenever they rebelled against the inhumane conditions and precarity that they experienced, they were met with a level of violence that labor organizers in Europe were often spared. American native stock didn’t aspire to be wage laborers; those who owned farms remained on their farms, at least until the railroads, banks, and US government collaborated during the Depression of the 1890s to purge independent farmers of their farms and push them into the cities to become wage laborers like the immigrant stock.

In addition, there is no way for us to know what would have or would not have occurred throughout history without America or, at least, America as it was. Perhaps worse, perhaps better; but, the historical timeline would’ve been unquestionably radically different. So, bringing up our war against Nazi Germany, the Marshall Plan, etc… is pointless.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

America’s history of imperialism is quite different from that of European imperial powers; true. However, America was still an imperialist power. It sought to dominate the Americas, which it considered its sphere of influence. America not only performed atrocities against Native Americans, but also consistently interfered politically, militarily, and economically in Latin America. We meddled in the affairs of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Chile, and many others. We also interfered in the affairs of Iran, Philippines, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Israel/Palestine, and so on… That has been conducted through coups, sanctions, invasions, covert operations, and use of corporations backed by the American state. Our track record is hardly cleaner than Western Europe’s; it’s simply different and performed over a shorter period of time and using different rhetoric.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There’s really no basis for this claim. America inherited its democratic, constitutional system from Great Britain, albeit in an improved form. However, democracy was not something acquired for the masses through the deliberations of our elite or the pursuit of some houghty ideals by our political leadership. It was acquired through the constant struggle, often violent and frequently quashed, of America’s laborers to secure for themselves representation. Democratic representation has almost always been obtained through violence or the threat thereof; American male landowners obtained it through an armed struggle against England. American middle and working class males obtained it through political struggles in the 1820s-30s. American women obtained it through protests and other forms of activism. African Americans only secured it through mass mobilization that frequently ended in violent uprisings that swept across American cities. The same is true in practically every country on earth. Democracy spreading throughout the world wasn’t due to America; it was due to the struggles of each country’s ordinary citizens to achieve greater power in their society, which was resisted by the elite in every instance.

[Calthrina950]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

[Reluctant Republican]

Reason posted an article sort of defending the teens here. It is Reason, so it's a source that leans to the (Libertarian) right, but I found it interesting if only to demonstrate the sort of take I'm seeing on right wing media.

https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-video#comment

The section that stuck out to me, and I'm curious what everyone else thinks of it:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Badger]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

[Calthrina950]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

[Jeffster]

Reason posted an article sort of defending the teens here. It is Reason, so it's a source that leans to the (Libertarian) right, but I found it interesting if only to demonstrate the sort of take I'm seeing on right wing media.

https://reason.com/blog/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-nathan-phillips-video#comment

The section that stuck out to me, and I'm curious what everyone else thinks of it:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This Phillips guy is turning out to be a complete liar. He claimed the students chanted "build the wall" to him and his group. So far no evidence of that despite now having a nearly 2 hr livestream recording of everything before, during, and after he got there. Still waiting for the proof Badger. He has a history of going to the media with charges of racism. He claimed he wanted to get to the memorial but the kids were blocking his way, but the longer video shows plenty of space to the right of the students to walk up the steps, but he passes that and goes straight to the students.

[Badger]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

I don't "need" to change anything, nitwit. I am a registered Republican and a card-carrying member of my County's Republican Central Committee. The fact that I supported Obama and passionately opposed Trump only speaks to my having discernment and being willing to put country over party. Yes, it's disappointing that the vast majority of Republicans are willing to delude themselves and / or willfully tolerate over treason and racism in the name of party Unity, but I will gladly Embrace myself as that sliver minority of the party. And some so independent right-wing hack telling me what I can or can't do really matters Jack schitt to me, nor should it otherwise.

But I'll tell you what. While I've repeatedly publicly posted that I plan to change my avatar when I almost surely vote in a Democratic Primary in 2020 and thereby officially forgo my Republican registration, I'll be glad to do it earlier, in the complete sake of accuracy, you adopt a National Socialist Party of America Avatar.

[Calthrina950]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

I don't "need" to change anything, nitwit. I am a registered Republican and a card-carrying member of my County's Republican Central Committee. The fact that I supported Obama and passionately opposed Trump only speaks to my having discernment and being willing to put country over party. Yes, it's disappointing that the vast majority of Republicans are willing to delude themselves and / or willfully tolerate over treason and racism in the name of party Unity, but I will gladly Embrace myself as that sliver minority of the party. And some so independent right-wing hack telling me what I can or can't do really matters Jack schitt to me, nor should it otherwise.

But I'll tell you what. While I've repeatedly publicly posted that I plan to change my avatar when I almost surely vote in a Democratic Primary in 2020 and thereby officially forgo my Republican registration, I'll be glad to do it earlier, in the complete sake of accuracy, you adopt a National Socialist Party of America Avatar.

You're still convinced that you are a Republican. Perhaps what fhtagn has said about you is truly relevant. At any rate, this is going nowhere. I call people out as I see them, and I've called you out for what you are. Given how you've treated me and others on here, it's only fair that I do so.

[ProudModerate2]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

What is it with Calthrina having such a hard-on obsession about Badger's "avatar"?
And his "you just admitted it!" comment like a child jumping up-and-down, or the discovery of gold in California.

[ProudModerate2]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

I don't "need" to change anything, nitwit. I am a registered Republican and a card-carrying member of my County's Republican Central Committee. The fact that I supported Obama and passionately opposed Trump only speaks to my having discernment and being willing to put country over party. Yes, it's disappointing that the vast majority of Republicans are willing to delude themselves and / or willfully tolerate over treason and racism in the name of party Unity, but I will gladly Embrace myself as that sliver minority of the party. And some so independent right-wing hack telling me what I can or can't do really matters Jack schitt to me, nor should it otherwise.

But I'll tell you what. While I've repeatedly publicly posted that I plan to change my avatar when I almost surely vote in a Democratic Primary in 2020 and thereby officially forgo my Republican registration, I'll be glad to do it earlier, in the complete sake of accuracy, you adopt a National Socialist Party of America Avatar.

You're still convinced that you are a Republican. Perhaps what fhtagn has said about you is truly relevant. At any rate, this is going nowhere. I call people out as I see them, and I've called you out for what you are. Given how you've treated me and others on here, it's only fair that I do so.

LOL.
It seems the ***** just revealed his "secret informer" to be fhtagn.
Like two peas (or Deplorables) in a pod. They all deserve each other.

[Calthrina950]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

I don't "need" to change anything, nitwit. I am a registered Republican and a card-carrying member of my County's Republican Central Committee. The fact that I supported Obama and passionately opposed Trump only speaks to my having discernment and being willing to put country over party. Yes, it's disappointing that the vast majority of Republicans are willing to delude themselves and / or willfully tolerate over treason and racism in the name of party Unity, but I will gladly Embrace myself as that sliver minority of the party. And some so independent right-wing hack telling me what I can or can't do really matters Jack schitt to me, nor should it otherwise.

But I'll tell you what. While I've repeatedly publicly posted that I plan to change my avatar when I almost surely vote in a Democratic Primary in 2020 and thereby officially forgo my Republican registration, I'll be glad to do it earlier, in the complete sake of accuracy, you adopt a National Socialist Party of America Avatar.

You're still convinced that you are a Republican. Perhaps what fhtagn has said about you is truly relevant. At any rate, this is going nowhere. I call people out as I see them, and I've called you out for what you are. Given how you've treated me and others on here, it's only fair that I do so.

LOL.
It seems the ***** just revealed his "secret informer" to be fhtagn.
Like two peas (or Deplorables) in a pod. They all deserve each other.

As for you, ProudModerate2, change your avatar to a red or burgundy one. As many others have said, you are no independent.

[ProudModerate2]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

I don't "need" to change anything, nitwit. I am a registered Republican and a card-carrying member of my County's Republican Central Committee. The fact that I supported Obama and passionately opposed Trump only speaks to my having discernment and being willing to put country over party. Yes, it's disappointing that the vast majority of Republicans are willing to delude themselves and / or willfully tolerate over treason and racism in the name of party Unity, but I will gladly Embrace myself as that sliver minority of the party. And some so independent right-wing hack telling me what I can or can't do really matters Jack schitt to me, nor should it otherwise.

But I'll tell you what. While I've repeatedly publicly posted that I plan to change my avatar when I almost surely vote in a Democratic Primary in 2020 and thereby officially forgo my Republican registration, I'll be glad to do it earlier, in the complete sake of accuracy, you adopt a National Socialist Party of America Avatar.

You're still convinced that you are a Republican. Perhaps what fhtagn has said about you is truly relevant. At any rate, this is going nowhere. I call people out as I see them, and I've called you out for what you are. Given how you've treated me and others on here, it's only fair that I do so.

LOL.
It seems the ***** just revealed his "secret informer" to be fhtagn.
Like two peas (or Deplorables) in a pod. They all deserve each other.

As for you, ProudModerate2, change your avatar to a red or burgundy one. As many others have said, you are no independent.

You are the worst poster on Atlas.
All you do is repeat the same thing over and over again.
Almost every post starts off by some leading phrase like "by the looks of the Democratic responses in this thread ..." or "From reading all the liberal posts so far ..."
You're like a parrot. Sign-off of Atlas and go eat crackers on something.
I have never seen such a obsession about "avatar colors" from anyone. People change their color for various reasons. Many times people change it to mock the other side, or for any silly reason.
It means nothing on Atlas.

[Calthrina950]

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1. Population isn't static. Lots of ancestral Democrats have died over the last 10 years and been replaced by younger voters who believe the same things but don't have lifelong ties to the Democratic Party.

2. Trump got a lot of people to vote for him because they liked what he was saying. It's not like he's just a normal Republican and migration from Obama to him was due to disgust with Hillary or whatever - the Obama/Trump voters switched to him because of him. If Republicans go back to a Romney/McCain esque candidate in 2024, those voters may come back. Or maybe they've mentally switched over to being Republican and never will. But the idea that Democrats could have won or been super competitive in states like WV in 2016 against Trump just wasn't going to happen, no matter what developed in during the Obama years.

You seem to be buying into the narrative that West Virginia just all of a sudden flipped to the Democrats, when the evidence shows that such is not the case. Yes, there was generational turnover, but certainly not enough turnover to transform the state's entire electorate in just twenty years. There are literally hundreds of thousands of voters still alive throughout the South, and elsewhere, who were once Democratic voters, that have now gravitated towards the Republican Party. Just as there are suburban and urban voters, who once voted Republican, that have now gone Democratic.

This thread degenerated in exactly the way that Atlas threads tend to degenerate. Some news story is posted, more often than not a negative piece on Republicans or Trump supporters (given the ideological bias of many on this forum), the right-leaning side tries to defend it, and the left-leaning side savages them, calling them "bigots" and "hateful" and other such names. And it all turns out to become a pointless argument that will leave nothing resolved, only inflames tensions, and sets the groundwork for the next argument. I guess this is what you get when you have a bunch of testosterone-fueled males (for this is a male-dominated forum), who are determined to prove that they are the "better man", and to run over their opponents.

And it's something that once again, the left-leaning posters on here are confusing Fuzzy Bear with being a Republican. When he has made clear, many times, that he doesn't align with that Party on many issues, and when he has told us about his Democratic past. For these posters, you must grovel at the altar of liberalism down the line, lest you be called out and denounced as evil.

Fuzzy is an "independent" the same way every deranged Obama-hating fanatic in 2010 was independent because they thought the GOP wasn't insane enough for their liking.

We live in a two-party system and you are, for all intents and purposes, "part of" the party whose candidates you vote for the majority of the time. If you voted for Trump, you are a Republican. If you voted for Trump, you certainly have no place in the Democratic Party.

Wow! You can kiss the Obama-Trump voters goodbye with this. If the Democratic Party as a whole pursues this strategy in 2020, it might make it possible for Trump to win the Electoral College again. And it would only worsen political polarization. Fuzzy Bear, moreover, voted for Nelson and Gillum last year, and he's an "Obama-Trump voter", who is not definitive on voting for Trump in 2020. You and other left-leaning Atlas posters might just push him down that path with the way you treat him.

For once, Catherina right. The better and more exact analysis would be if you STILL support without at least SUBSTANTIAL RESERVATIONS, there is a 99% chance you have no room in the current Democratic Party.

Wrong on this score, as well. There are many former Democratic voters who still strongly support Trump because they feel disillusioned with the national Democratic Party on many different issues, and are at a complete disconnect with the Party.

If by " many former Democratic voters" you mean septuagenarians who haven't voted for a Democrat for president since before Bill Clinton, and whom remain " economically anxious" over the proliferation of immigrants out in public where everyone can see them, then yes, your otherwise spittle dribble of a post is at least, in the most generously imaginable form of the phrase, partially correct.

Of course the post would be a lot more convincing even for that scintilla of a percent nominally correct portion if it wasn't promoted by a chronic right-wing hack who virtue signals " both sides do it" like a repeating Loop sample.

Did you not see my most recent post? There was still residual support for Democrats such as Gore, Kerry, and Obama that has now gone to the Republicans. Obama got over 40% in West Virginia as late as 2008. Given how things are now, I doubt a Democrat will get much above 30% there for the next few decades, at least. And it is something for you to call me a "chronic right-wing hack", given that you're a liberal Democrat and Obama supporter who claims to be a Republican.

1, please see my post above where I went into detail about your reply. Feel free to peruse it, but the summary is that anyone that expects the Democrats to try to win back votes in places like Western PA or, LOL, Eastern Kentucky by becoming anti-gay rights or climate change denialists is asking the Democratic party to adopt a morally AND ELECTORALLY foolish path.

2. BTW, regarding your second point about being a liberal and an Obama supporter who "pretends" to be a republican, I think I've explained this in thorough detail enough honest many threads that you were simply being intellectually dishonest in your claim that I'm not "actually" a Republican. The simple 2 + 2 equals 4 fact, not opinion, about the matter is I am yes, both a liberal and an Obama supporter, and also a registered Republican. It's this whole country over party thing that any so-called self-professed moderate like yourself should really look into.

You just admitted it! You are a liberal Obama supporter. Being a "registered Republican" doesn't make any difference on that score. There are many "registered Democrats" who are conservative Trump supporters, and vote Republican down the line (i.e. "DINOs" in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky). You are no different from them.

1. Your "point", such as it is, proves nothing. West Virginia flipped on Mass to the Democratic party when the issue of coal miner rights and unionization became more important in the New Deal van their Civil War Union roots from 70 years earlier. Not a big brain teaser there. Likewise, they flip Justice solidly Republican in the last 15 to 20 years when the Democrats opposition to Colby a major contributor 2 global warming, and they're trying to preserve what mining jobs they had left, became more important than there 70 year old tradition of Union activism. Again, unless you were somehow trying to argue that the Democrats wisest Choice, morally or politically, is to become climate change the nihilists like the Republicans, there's nothing unusual about this. Good for Joe manchin for being able to straddle both and keep his senate seat democratic. Beyond that, you're really not making any particularly Illuminating Point here.

2. Yes, I've made basically this same post many many times in the last several months. I don't know what kind of effing gotcha moment this is, genius, but I gladly stand by. Iirc close to 10% of Republicans voted for Obama in 2008, and a somewhat smaller percentage in 2012. Yes, I am in the very distinct minority of Republicans, I'm very sorry to say, who actually backed Trump despite his being manifestly unqualified and arguably treasonous on every conceivable level, including as a human being, but again, maybe you ought to look into this whole country over party thing. I did, I embrace it happily, and again, you aren't "proving" anything in your repetitive screeds.

And fwiw, I am as much of a republican as you are a "moderate" seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

You need to change your avatar. Become like Joe Scarborough-who is now an independent. And yes, I am aware of why West Virginia trended towards the Republicans in the first place. Which is exactly my point! Voters who were once Democratic became alienated by the national Party, due to it's social and environmental policies, and moved accordingly towards the Republicans. Race, of course, pushed many of them even further, under Obama.

I don't "need" to change anything, nitwit. I am a registered Republican and a card-carrying member of my County's Republican Central Committee. The fact that I supported Obama and passionately opposed Trump only speaks to my having discernment and being willing to put country over party. Yes, it's disappointing that the vast majority of Republicans are willing to delude themselves and / or willfully tolerate over treason and racism in the name of party Unity, but I will gladly Embrace myself as that sliver minority of the party. And some so independent right-wing hack telling me what I can or can't do really matters Jack schitt to me, nor should it otherwise.

But I'll tell you what. While I've repeatedly publicly posted that I plan to change my avatar when I almost surely vote in a Democratic Primary in 2020 and thereby officially forgo my Republican registration, I'll be glad to do it earlier, in the complete sake of accuracy, you adopt a National Socialist Party of America Avatar.

You're still convinced that you are a Republican. Perhaps what fhtagn has said about you is truly relevant. At any rate, this is going nowhere. I call people out as I see them, and I've called you out for what you are. Given how you've treated me and others on here, it's only fair that I do so.

LOL.
It seems the ***** just revealed his "secret informer" to be fhtagn.
Like two peas (or Deplorables) in a pod. They all deserve each other.

As for you, ProudModerate2, change your avatar to a red or burgundy one. As many others have said, you are no independent.

You are the worst poster on Atlas.
All you do is repeat the same thing over and over again.
Almost every post starts off by some leading phrase like "by the looks of the Democratic responses in this thread ..." or "From reading all the liberal posts so far ..."
You're like a parrot. Sign-off of Atlas and go eat crackers on something.
I have never seen such a obsession about "avatar colors" from anyone. People change their color for various reasons. Many times people change it to mock the other side, or for any silly reason.
It means nothing on Atlas.

This title belongs to you. All you do is post snarky little insults against other people, all while claiming to be a moderate. That is deceptive, and it is wrong.

[Beet]

I lived in DC for four years and those Black Hebrew Israelites were the worst. They used to (and probably still do) stand on one of the busiest street corners in the city every Friday afternoon, in military garb with graphic posters of bloody fetuses, blasting everyone ending their workweek telling them they are going to hell, blasting white people, blasting Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. The main guy has a deep, baritone voice and uses a loudspeaker set at the maximum setting so you can literally hear him for blocks. Tourists from Ohio and locals alike. I'm not surprised that they were at the March for Life and if they were arguing with the students, I can understand why the boys were in a confrontational mood.

Liberals need to realize that racism is a two-way street. Yeah white folk have more institutional power and systemic advantage, but that doesn't mean POC racism isn't out there or that it isn't hurtful at all. It's hypocritical to blast it in one instance but ignore it in another.

[The Dowager Mod]

Could you guys maybe stop derailing the thread now?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Could you guys maybe stop derailing the thread now?

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!! times a bajillion.

This thread has to be up there for one of the worst in Atlas history.  I think it should just be locked and if any significant developments in the story occur it can be unlocked or a new thread made.

[136or142]

The high school has issued a statement sincerely apologizing to Nathan Phillips for the behavior of its students.  They also indicate that expulsions may follow.

Is America Great Again, yet?

But wait, jeffster told me these kids were the victims here?

But the idea that these kids actively harassed Nathan Phillips is ridiculous.  They ran into a guy with bigger stones than they had, and far more self control.  That's what I saw on the video.  I saw Nathan Phillips approach these kids and refuse to back down or go in another direction.  Mr. Phillips, at no time, had his ingress and egress blocked.

This is not correct.  While it is true that there wasn't much more room for him to walk forward before the moron smirk kid stepped in front of him, at around the same time, a whole bunch of kids moved in behind him and effectively formed a tight circle around him.

Nathan Phillips said that he felt threatened.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Could you guys maybe stop derailing the thread now?

The issue here is the accuracy of the thread title, which is not supported by various videos.  It is a hoped-for narrative by the OP that falls short.

A correction of the Thread Title was called for here, to accurately reflect the situation.  Can moderators not do that?

[Wisconsin SC Race 2019]

Kids these days and their lack of manners. They haven't been spanked and it shows.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

The high school has issued a statement sincerely apologizing to Nathan Phillips for the behavior of its students.  They also indicate that expulsions may follow.

Is America Great Again, yet?

But wait, jeffster told me these kids were the victims here?

But the idea that these kids actively harassed Nathan Phillips is ridiculous.  They ran into a guy with bigger stones than they had, and far more self control.  That's what I saw on the video.  I saw Nathan Phillips approach these kids and refuse to back down or go in another direction.  Mr. Phillips, at no time, had his ingress and egress blocked.

This is not correct.  While it is true that there wasn't much more room for him to walk forward before the moron smirk kid stepped in front of him, at around the same time, a whole bunch of kids moved in behind him and effectively formed a tight circle around him.

Nathan Phillips said that he felt threatened.

When?

And where?

He certainly did not act threatened.  Not one bit.  And he certainly was not blocked from going anywhere.  These students did not impede his progress; he approached them.  

There's video of all of this.  If these kids threatened him and committed a crime, then, by all means, arrest them.  Issue warrants.  File charges.  That's not the message I got in my video of Nathan Phillips, and that's not what the videos I've seen show, but if there's evidence for this, then let it happen. 

[Wisconsin SC Race 2019]

White Gen Zers are shaping up to be more right-wing than even their parents.