American Elections 2014

[rowland]

The Olbatross speaks:

thehill.com/homenews/campaign/22 … ong-allies

“The bottom line is though, these are all folks who vote with me, they have supported my agenda in Congress, they are on the right side of minimum wage, they are on the right side of fair pay, they are on the right side of rebuilding our infrastructure, they’re on the right side of early childhood education.”

Obama went on to say that his feelings weren’t hurt by Democrats reluctant to campaign with him.

“These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me, and I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to do to win. I will be responsible for making sure our voters turn out.’ ”

At least he’s not insisting on personal loyalty from people running for office. But it’s still all about him.

Or maybe his point is they’re supposed to be loyal and lie about it. No… too complicated. Self-absorbtion plus stupidity explains everything he says and does.

[rowland]

[quote=“Gao Bohan”]
Of course loyalty shouldn’t be blind. But it shouldn’t be based on public opinion polls either. [/quote]

In the case at hand, what are the other options?

[rowland]

theblaze.com/stories/2014/10 … r-stunned/

Guy: “What’s your problem?”

LaFaro: “I don’t have a problem.”

Guy: “Stop watching me. You’re annoying me.”

LaFaro: “One of your ballots isn’t sealed.”

Guy: “It’s none of your business. What’s your name?”

LaFaro: “I’m the chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party. What’s yours?”

Guy: “Go f*** yourself. I don’t have to tell you who I am.”

LaFaro said he later submitted a public information request and obtained this surveillance video from 12:30- 1:30 on Aug. 25 (audio unavailable):

[Atomist]

Obama really does make everything worse for Democrats these days. His new “ebola czar” has no medical experience but a lot of PR experience, that hasn’t helped. You’d think if he was going to hire a PR guy over ebola then he wouldn’t tell everyone he was doing it.

[rowland]

He’s lost Tina Brown. Personally, I think there’s something sexist about this idea that women are all concerned abut having a big strong man to protect them from the big scary world, but whatever. When Tina used to swoon over The One, the tone of her gushing didn’t exactly make the case for feminism.

newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/Tina- … id/601916/

Appearing Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Brown responded to a Sunday report on Politico that Obama’s lack of support from female voters is hurting Democrats’ chances in the Nov. 4 midterm elections.

“I think they’re feeling unsafe,” Brown said. “They feel unsafe economically, they’re feeling unsafe with regard to ISIS, they’re feeling unsafe about Ebola. What they feel unsafe about is the government response to different crises.”

Obama’s personality is the problem, Brown said.

“I think they’re beginning to feel a bit that Obama’s like that guy in the corner office who’s too cool for school, calls a meeting, says this has to change, doesn’t put anything in place to make sure it does change, then it goes wrong and he’s blaming everybody,” she said.

Guess he’s not such an alpha male after all. Well,Tina… enjoy your walk of shame.

[Winston_Smith]

I don’t think the Sociocratic Party does alpha males. Plenty of alpha females though. Why they haven’t nominated one for president yet is beyond me.

[rowland]

@Winston Smith

I don’t think the Sociocratic Party does alpha males. Plenty of alpha females though. Why they haven’t nominated one for president yet is beyond me.

Ozymandias was an unknown. People were free to project onto him what they wanted to see, and had the manipulativenss to encourage that. Hillary, on the other hand, is too much of a known quantity. There just isn’t much room there for imagination to work.

[Mucha_Man]

@rowland

…Personally, I think there’s something sexist about this idea that women are all concerned abut having a big strong man to protect them from the big scary world, but whatever. When Tina used to swoon over The One, the tone of her gushing didn’t exactly make the case for feminism.

I must say you are doing a bang up job of parodying the racist sexist douchey white male uncle who manages to keep his thoughts to himself until the party is nearly over and he figures he has nothing to lose now.

[rowland]

[quote=“Mucha Man”]
I must say you are doing a bang up job of parodying the racist sexist douchey white male uncle who manages to keep his thoughts to himself until the party is nearly over and he figures he has nothing to lose now. [/quote]

Why, thank you.

While we’re on the subject, here’s another poster girl for knuckle-dragging male chauvinism:

pagesix.com/2014/10/20/monica-le … 1413851243

Oh, and it doesn’t help when those who consider themselves politically correct rag on Margaret Thatcher. It seems they only admire strong, competent women in the abstract. The real thing is more than they can handle.

[rowland]

illinoisreview.typepad.com/illin … l#comments

SCHAUMBURG, IL – Admitting his confidence in Cook County ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” said Moynihan. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat."

While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race. It is unknown if the machine in question (#008958) has been removed from service or is still in operation.

[Atomist]

Well it’s Illinois, proudest blue state in the country.

[Gao_Bohan]

Hard hitting journalism from typepad.com, huh?

[rowland]

@Gao Bohan

Hard hitting journalism from typepad.com, huh?

These days, you take your investigative journalism where you can find it. The old news organizations have abdicated.

[Atomist]

I think this clip sums up the mood for this election cycle. First Shaheen bellyflopped and got laughed at, then Brown ravaged her with his response. I’m hoping that he can get back into the senate.

[rowland]

weeklystandard.com/articles/ … 17063.html

The Washington Post may have been first in declaring the coming midterms “kind of—and apologies to Seinfeld here—an election about nothing.” But the Daily Beast chimed in: “America seems resigned to a Seinfeld election in 2014—a campaign about nothing.” And New York magazine noted (and embraced) the cliché: The midterm election “has managed to earn a nickname from the political press: the ‘Seinfeld Election,’ an election about nothing.”

Soon enough this description was popping up everywhere—the New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, Politico, and many others. The 2014 Midterms, the Seinfeld Election.

Others posited something even worse. “The 2014 campaign has been the most boring and uncreative campaign I can remember,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks. That wasn’t harsh enough for Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post, who went further. The election isn’t just “boring,” he wrote, “it’s vapid and inconsequential.”

The big television networks seem to agree. The signature newscasts of ABC, NBC, and CBS have barely found the upcoming elections worthy of notice.

If the Dems don’t end up losing big, I wonder what they’ll say then?

[rowland]

More rumblings of fraud…

washingtonpost.com/blogs/mon … -election/

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

So far, just exrapolation from a small sample size, but at least somebody’s looking.

[Gao_Bohan]

I am surprised that Michelle Nunn has kept the race competitive in Georgia against David Perdue. Personally, I don’t think she’ll win because Georgia has a great deal more Republicans than Democrats. The “gravity” of the state pulls right, giving Purdue a clear advantage. Still, the 538 model takes those fundamentals into account, but still give Nunn a 49% chance of winning. If neither candidate can win an outright majority, they’ll head into a runoff. The reason is that there is a third party candidate who will take some small percentage of the vote. The third party candidate is a libertarian, conservative on fiscal issues and liberal on social issues, so she’s probably sucking off both of them equally.

Even if Nunn manages to win, which I personally find very doubtful, the Republicans will still probably win. They’ve got several paths to victory, but for Democrats to keep the Senate, they effectively have to win every single competitive race.

[rowland]

Something to get the sexists’ blood boiling, especially those in denial:

nypost.com/2014/10/23/tale-of-tw … -democrat/

Yet the Stefanik story has been all but ignored outside of local and conservative media because she doesn’t fit the preferred profile: a socially liberal Democrat, preferably with a dovish foreign policy.

She’s far from alone here, given the large supply of accomplished Republican women running this year — mostly against men.

There’s Jodi Ernst, a colonel in the National Guard who served in Iraq and is up slightly in a very tight Senate race in Iowa.

Or Mia Love, a black Mormon running for Congress in Utah, who is up by 9 points.

Or Barbara Comstock, an attractive, unabashed conservative and working mom who leads in her highly watched Virginia race for an open House seat.

Or Marilinda Garcia, a young, Harvard-educated, conservative Latina who is slightly behind Democrat Ann Kuster in their New Hampshire House race.

True, some of the gloss has come off Wendy Davis since folks learned how many parts of her personal story were more fairy tale than fact.

[MikeN]

[quote=“rowland”]More rumblings of fraud…

washingtonpost.com/blogs/mon … -election/

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

So far, just exrapolation from a small sample size, but at least somebody’s looking.[/quote]

A couple of replies, questioning the numbers:

washingtonpost.com/blogs/mon … ns-voting/

washingtonpost.com/blogs/mon … -citizens/

But of course, a good solution would be a national voter ID following standardized rules in every state, which would ensure easy access to ballots for all citize… “OHMIGOD OBAMA IS MARKING US WITH THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST TO PUT ALL CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVES IN FEMA CONCENTRATION CAMPS!!!”

[rowland]

[quote=“MikeN”]
But of course, a good solution would be a national voter ID following standardized rules in every state, [/quote]

Won’t that make it harder for poor people to vote in some vague way?