April 18, 2016

3 Million Calls!

Bernie Sanders supporters made 3 million calls this past weekend according to the campaign's digital field director which is absolutely insane

https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/4f9qgf/three_million_calls/

I got on the phones and just wanted to encourage people here to consider it - it is really easy, you have a script and right now it's not persuasion at all, it's just get out the vote - reminding people of their polling place and stuff like that

If you want to there is extensive info at the Bernie Sanders reddit page

(Which side-note - I get so mad when I hear about 'BernieBros' because all the people on reddit are incredibly positive and working really hard, negativity towards Hillary is actively discouraged, instead the focus is on taking action (and I'm a woman and I would say half of the people on our campus Bernie group are women as well))

April 1, 2016

Karl Rove says "a fresh face" should be GOP nominee and might be only chance to beat Hillary Clinton

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/01/karl_rove_courts_convention_chaos_bushs_brain_is_laying_the_groundwork_for_an_establishment_coup_and_its_going_to_get_ugly/

Just posting a bit of schadenfreude - because is anyone else delighted by the idea that the Republican primary process has basically made all of their potential candidates unelectable?

Note - I've had to edit this thing like 3 times due to my own inability to spell, sorry

March 30, 2016

Can we be honest about how few swing states there are?

Do you live in one of these 7 states?
Ohio, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Florida

If so, I'm really happy for you that your vote matters in the general. Mine will not, so withholding my vote doesn't do a thing to the electoral math. This is effectively the case for people in any state but those listed above, so all these posts bemoaning 'Bernie or Bust' people seem at best disingenuous.

If we want to talk about what Dems in swing states should do - then I think we should look at this like a traditional poli-sci problem - there will no doubt be frequent voters who will come out and push the lever for their party even if there was a blizzard in November, then there are true independents who require persuasion of some kind but will show up at the polls, the last group is infrequent Dem voters - so then we need to ask, what makes these people go to the polls (obviously there is no need to bother with infrequent Repubs or infrequent independents - that's wasted time). I think a much more productive conversation is - which candidate is likely to bring out independent voters and infrequently voting Dems - and that's probably best answered by looking at the exit polls so far and the results in open primaries.

(This is effectively a repost of a response I made to another post - I'm not sure if that's allowed. I'll delete if not. I'm just hoping to have a discussion that's based in the reality of the Electoral College system)

March 26, 2016

Who's afraid of Donald Trump?

I'm just sort of curious because my personal opinion is that because of Trump's lack of connections to republican politicians and due to a fairly moderate supreme court, I just don't see Trump being able to accomplish much of anything even through executive orders. In particular, the idea that he could set up the infrastructure needed to build a wall in 4 years seems pretty ridiculous. Also, I'm liking our odds in 2020 due to the continual shifting of demographics in the dems' favor - so I guess I'm just curious, what do you think is a worst case scenario if Trump were elected?