Heading Home, 11/7/18
Posted on November 7, 2018 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
It’s a rainy day here in Paris and it’s time for me to go home. I have a whole day in airports and planes before I get there. But then I get to be with my family, so it will be worth it.
I woke up this morning, caught my breath and then checked the election results. Then I let out my breath. Not a perfect showing but good enough for now. I’ll have more to say on it when I’m back home and caught my breath (and slept!), but the short form is, I’m not displeased, and now things will get interesting. It’s a new day.
Catch you all tomorrow.
Flying west is cool, the time zones work *for* you. (Conversely, flying east just sucks.)
And yes, celebrate that the ‘checks and balances’ have been somewhat restored. Now if Cory Booker would pick up his game…
You just left, and suddenly the sun is gone and the temperature goes down, the wind rises and the rains pours down…
Airbus A319, American Airlines
A third of tbe senate was up for election yesterday.
27 were held by dems. 8 were held by republicans.
Right there, the odds were stacked against dems taking senate.
All incumbents were elected 6 years ago, 2012, which would have been the year Obama was reelected, which likely had some reddish states lean blue.
Three senate seats that dems lost were in north dakota, missourri, and indiana, and all three of those states are fairly red and voted for trump in 2016.
Getting the senate this year was always a long shot just because of the way a random selection of the seats up for election happen to stack up against dems.
I think the important thing is dems have a large enough lead in the house that they can (a) protect mueller and (b) subpeona the president eventually leading to (c) impeaching the president. And if the timing for that impeachment can stain the republican party for the 2020 election, ah well.
I often hear independent voters say they are going to vote for an independent candidate for president, knowing it will help the republican win the presidency, and they will argue that having the 2orst candidate win will be a good thing in the long run because it will magically correct the system.
That is a completely idiot strategy for going into the voting vooth.
Always vote for the best candidate that has a chance of winning.
But after the election, if things dont turn out the way you like, if the bad guys win, if republicans keep the senate, then it is a completely legitimate strategy going forward for dems to spend that time doing everything they can to destroy Trump, expose his fraud, his crimes, his tax evasion, subpeona women to testify about his sexual harrasment, and then hand Trumps presidency around the neck of the entire republican party. House dems have a huge lead. If they do not use it to run a scorched earth policy against Trump and taint the republican party for the 2020 election, then they are damnable fools.
FYI: In the 2020 senate election, 21 republicans and only 11 democrats will be up for grabs meaning there is chance to grab the senate. But dems need to start hammering trump now and make the republican party guilty by association.
A new day indeed. Now we wait for Mueller to finish his job.
It could have been worse but I’m not thrilled. I didn’t like McCaskill and Heitkamp losing (if a Democrat needed to lose, I would have preferred Menendez).. Considering how bad Trump has been (even with the economy), the support of at least a few conservatives, and how far Republicans have betrayed their principles (or at least the ones they’ve claimed to have), and despite the economy, it seems like a mediocre outcome. Democrats did better with governors but still lost a lot. Getting rid of some of the more execrable Republicans (Walker, King) was nice, though.
Trump is like (the phrase Stephen King used for Randall Flagg) the last magician of rational thought. Somehow he went from a bigoted birther businessman to the Republican candidate for President to being President with a cranky party to taking over the party. If Republicans wanted people to follow what they’ve claimed their principles are, they could have had them, and clearly don’t. If people who aren’t in a party want someone different than the Republicans chose, they could have had them, also (because the Republicans if nothing else are about winning). It seems like either people want what the Republicans have (for the people they don’t like – black and brown people, people who aren’t heterosexual, people who aren’t Christian – to go away) or that they dislike/despise the Democrats so much that voting for execrable Republicans is better than voting for Democrats. or both. Unless something changes, the Republicans can keep doing what they’re doing – there’s no clear sign that they’ve found a limit to what they can do. Considering how they’ve behaved and what Trump has said and done, that’s discouraging.
” Always vote for the best candidate that has a chance of winning.”
1) In 2016 there were No ‘good’ candidates for POTUS. None.
2) My state was always going to go for Clinton, whom I despised as much as Trump. Voting third party was my only conscionable choice.
The GOP deserved Trump, the Democrats deserved Clinton. The US deserved better than either. ymmv
Hap: King is not gone.
Worst for me was Florida; one big FU to the Parkland kids :(.
Trump loses the House, but declares victory anyway. Spin it ’til the cows come home, your leash got shortened, bub.
Greg: “Always vote for the best candidate that has a chance of winning.”
Dana: ” In 2016 there were No ‘good’ candidates for POTUS. None.”
Bless your heart, thats exactly NOT what I said. “Vote for the best candidate that has a chance of winning” is not “vote for the good candidate”. Independents will cry and mewl about how they simply canNOT vote for the lesser of two evils, but given 2 evils, why would you not want the lesser evil?
Why? Because independents presidential voters are often straight, and white, and usually well off, and they dont have to suffer the consequences of shirking their respobsibilities to vote in a way that makes a difference for everyone else.
Independent presidential voters generally argue that their vote magically makes the bigger difference than voting for, say, Hilary, because they know four years of Trump wont make them the victim of a hate crime, wont get them deported, wont put them in a financial bind, because they know trumps platform of industrialized cruelty doesnt target them.
Independent presidential voters are only thinking about their voter “purity”, about how they are better than all the rest of us “sheeple”, and they assert their superiority over the rest of us by fucking over everyone who suffers from the consequences of their holier-than-thou vote.
Third party presidential voters are entirely indifferent to the cruelty they inflict on others now by convincing themselves their cruelty will get them into presidential heaven someday down the road.
What you will never hear a third party presidential voter say is “my vote helped the new president win, helped bring about the state of the nation we are in now, and i am not personally affected by that, and if others have to suffer for 4 or 8 years so that i can get my utopia president candidate someday down the road, then i am willing to make you that sacrifice”
Third party presidential voters never say that, even though that is exactly what they are doing.
Did i like hilary? No. But she wouldnt have encouraged nazis to commit murder in the streets. So i held my nose and voted for her because she was better than trump. Its called “taking one for the team”, something third party presidential voters have no concept of. Sacrifice a little of yourself for the betterment of others. Third party presidential voters instead sacrifice other people so they can maybe get their ideal candidate someday.
Third party presidential voters never tale responsibility for the short term harm their vote causes others, but they want credit for some hypothetical utopia they think they are creating by sacrificing others.
Cruel indifference, irresponsible for the effects of their actions, sacrificing others for their own political purity. Holding their cruelty as somehow making them superior to us sheeple.
Not buying it.
I learned a lesson about third-party voting in 1980, when I voted for John Anderson instead of Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan. Like so many others who have voted for third-party candidates, I wanted to send a message to Washington. And I did! Unfortunately, the message was, “I have no idea how presidential elections work.”
Yes, there are places where third-party candidates draw huge numbers and win seats; look at Angus King or Bernie Sanders. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, those candidates crash and burn, and the votes for them derail candidates who did have a chance to win. If you want to make third-party voting a thing, start working on changing our election system to incorporate some form of instant runoff voting. It’ll take years, and I probably won’t live to see it, but it’s better use of your time than voting for third-party choices who don’t win.
1) I thought King was gone. Sorry. Ick.
2) FL (and GA) is a big FU to lots of people. I think that should be the GOP’s slogan – that or “F*$# voting for the lesser of two evils.”
That’s a beautiful photo.
Greg, I can abstain from supporting garbage candidates and face myself in the mirror. ‘Cruelty’? That’s some partisan-as-fuck spin, Bro.
Dana: ” I can abstain from supporting garbage candidates and face myself in the mirror”
Because you helped Trump get elected but refuse to take any responsibility for that.
Immigrant children were separated from their parents in part because of your third party vote. Nazis marched in charlottesville in part because of your vote. Antisemetic attacks are on the rise because of your vote.
Everything you want to blame trump for is partly to blame because of your vote.
But you will never be responsible for that.
You want a cookie for voting for the “best” candidate. And you want a cookie because you insist your vote will somehow force the system to provide “better” candidates sometime in the future. You want all the accolades for the good things you think your vote does in the future. But you take zero responsibility for anything bad your vote does RIGHT NOW.
You can face yourself in the mirror because you take zero responsibility for your part in helping a fascist into the white house but you want a pat on the back for the good you think your vote will do in 4 or 8 years.
Greg, Dana:
Go ahead and take this to email, please.
Talk about voting for “the lesser evil” always reminds me of Chaosium hosting Elder Party Rallies when GenCon and a presidential election coincided. Their secondary motto (primary being Cthulhu for President) was “Why vote for the [i]lesser[/i] evil?”
I haven’t been to GenCon for years, anyone know if Chaosium is still hosting those events?
How do elections work in the Colonial Union? Not Phoenix Station, mind u.
Clippership:
Depends on the colony.
Trump has fired Sessions and named hatchet man Whitaker to replace him. Both appeared together at a news conference this morning wearing Cobra Kai pins on their lapels, and Trump concluded the conference by shaking Whitaker’s hand while saying “sweep the leg”.
The picture and comment made me think of an old Billy Joel song:
Well it’s a rainy night in Paris
And I’m sitting by the Seine
It’s a please to be
Soaking in the European rain.
Now my belly’s full of fancy food and wine
But in the morning there’ll be hell to pay
Somewhere along the line.
Hope it was a great trip.