Lurker > Suprak the Stud

Maricopa drop is only supposed to be 36k votes today, so regardless it probably isn't enough to call the race. But McSally could really use a good drop.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Coconino posted about another 1k votes that went heavily towards Sinema so she's over 30k now.

That isn't that interesting by itself, but it leads me to believe Maricopa will have another drop today. This is a batch that McSally absolutely needs to start cutting into the lead because the county is starting to run out of votes and every batch thus far has cut Sinema's way.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Tell us more about mattress tags.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Jakyl always rips the tags off his mattresses, even when they tell him not to.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

...you never would've guessed Beto would be considered attractive?

Now I'm worried you may be legally blind and the reason you sniped at me about how people looked is just because you're jealous I have eyesight. If this is true, person reading these posts to Jakyl, please omit reading this post and instead just make some soothing ocean sounds.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Jakyl25 posted...

Suprak the Stud posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

Why do you consistently feel the need to tell us who gives you a boner?

Do you think we care?

Did you, at any point, hear any woman or man tell you that Beto was attractive?

No. Should I have?

Well, yes, it was a very common thing to come up, at least with people I talked to! Because Beto was also absurdly attractive for a politician.

https://splinternews.com/the-texas-gop-cant-stop-pointing-out-how-hot-beto-orour-1828684175
https://mashable.com/article/beto-o-rourke-is-hot-texas-gop-attack/#lk_FqSAoYaqu
https://guestofaguest.com/washington-dc/politics/candidate-crush-beto-orourke-is-the-hot-skater-senator-this-country-needs
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-beto-orourke-hot-enough-to-win-the-state-of-texas-in-the-us-midterm-elections-xbl6rmfjp
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I mean I have literally written huge posts about Sinema's qualifications, and why she is great for Arizona, and how she is a uniquely talented and brilliant candidate.

So you can also choose to respond to any of those too!
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Jakyl25 posted...

Why do you consistently feel the need to tell us who gives you a boner?

Do you think we care?

Did you, at any point, hear any woman or man tell you that Beto was attractive?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Corrik posted...

Suprak the Stud posted...

If anyone else wishes to follow along, this is the guy to follow:

https://twitter.com/garrett_archer?lang=en

He is the analyst for current Arizona secretary of state Michele Reagan (a republican). Each update the counties provide:

1) Where it is from
2) How many were counted
3) How many voted for each candidate
4) How many votes remain to be counted in that county
5) A lot of the time, they'll even tell you what kind of ballots were counted! So provisional vs mail in vs early vs late early

Arizona has an amazingly run system. I can't believe how easy it has been to follow and how much information they provide at each and every step. I dunno if most states are this way and I'm just noticing Arizona because this race is so close, but they have done a phenomenal job keeping everyone up to date.

I think Sinema has Arizona. I mean, I don't care too much as Arizona senators don't affect me much with a majority elsewise and I am not a Arizona directly constituent. At least Sinema is absolutely hot. Dems should stick to that strategy.

She's likely going to be even more conservative than Manchin, so you probably won't mind her politics all that much. She voted with Trump over 62% of the time.

But yes, she is absurdly attractive. I'm glad we can reach across the aisle to agree on this crucial point.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

If anyone else wishes to follow along, this is the guy to follow:

https://twitter.com/garrett_archer?lang=en

He is the analyst for current Arizona secretary of state Michele Reagan (a republican). Each update the counties provide:

1) Where it is from
2) How many were counted
3) How many voted for each candidate
4) How many votes remain to be counted in that county
5) A lot of the time, they'll even tell you what kind of ballots were counted! So provisional vs mail in vs early vs late early

Arizona has an amazingly run system. I can't believe how easy it has been to follow and how much information they provide at each and every step. I dunno if most states are this way and I'm just noticing Arizona because this race is so close, but they have done a phenomenal job keeping everyone up to date.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Whoops! For some reason I was redirected to the entire thread, not that specific tweet, and thought that tweet was the most interesting of the thread so I drew attention to it.

My bad!
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Late night Arizona updates!

Pima added 24,200 votes, of which it went +24 to Sinema (it was +14 on election night). Maricopa added 68k votes, which went +7 to Sinema (+3 on election night). Yavapai added 1k votes, which went +2 McSally (but had gone +24 to McSally on election night). Navajo added one final batch which went +30 to Sinema (+4 on election night - this is the one that had huge McSally drops earlier in the day so I do not know what is the cause of this huge swinginess but it balances out those earlier ones quite a bit). Finally, Coconino added 3.5k votes which went +30 Sinema (+27 Sinema on election night).

Outstanding votes can be found here:
https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1061433222599327746

264k total
198k Maricopa
36.3k Pima (big for Sinema)
21.6k Pinal (big for McSally)
6.1k Coconino (big for Sinema)
less than 1k everywhere else

Sinema has a lead of 29,832. She needs to pick up 30k in the final 264k, which would be tough, but not impossible. She'd need 147k to Sinema's 117k, which is 55.7% to 44.3% or an 11.4% difference.

BUT Pima and Coconino are quite favorable to Sinema. Let us assume she holds elections there and in Pinal to the same it was on Election Day (which would be impressive for McSally considering almost all updates have been going slightly to decently in Sinema's direction compared to Election Day. But if we assume that:

McSally picks up 11902 in Pinal to Sinema's 9137 (loss of 2765)
Sinema picks up 3782 in Coconino to McSally's 2129 (gain of 1653)
Sinema picks up 20384 in Pima to McSally's 15173 (gain of 5211)

So Sinema actually stands to gain around 6323 votes from non-Maricopa areas. Lets make that an even 6k so account for the few outstanding hundreds in the other rural areas that should go to McSally in greater numbers.

Going into the final batches of Maricopa, you are looking at Sinema having (approximately) a 36k lead with 198k votes. McSally's entire argument is that all of these last Maricopa votes are late "early" votes (i.e. returned the day of) which should go in her favor greatly. I'm not going to argue the logic of that, but let us just say that is true.

Maricopa would need to go 117k to 81k to get her these numbers. She'd need 59% of the vote to Sinema's 41%.

Again, not impossible. But those are really, really daunting numbers. If one more batch comes in and she doesn't shrink the margins significantly, I'd feel comfortable with Sinema winning. ONE DAY MORE. Hopefully.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

https://twitter.com/charlescwcooke/status/1061307563524927489

Yep, that's over then. 538 did some analysis and if the differential is in the tens of thousands range, it effectively has a 0% chance of being overturned outside of some sort of systematic error.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Another batch of late "early" votes came in from Navajo, and McSally ran up huge numbers again. This is a small district so it net like 200 votes, but if you see something similar from Maricopa she could very easily win.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Really good batch of votes for McSally from Navajo and Sinema now leads by 18.7k votes.

These just went for McSally 61-36. This is way above her Election Day totals. No indication what kind of ballots these were, but they were the first ones I remember seeing that went significantly to McSally compared to Election Day.

This is what she needs from Maricopa.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Almost all of Mohave (McSally's best district percentagewise) has come in addition to Pinal (still around 22k left there after a 4k or so drop today). This has lowered Sinema's lead from 20.2 to 19.2.

The good news for Sinema is that she is running ahead of her election night totals basically everywhere in early vote returns, which is to be expected. Also Mohave now has just a couple hundred provisional votes left. That leaves Pinal (22k) and Najavo (4k and election night was only a slight lead) as McSally counties outstanding. Sinema still has Pima (60.8k) and Coconino (9.6k) which were her two best counties election night.

Maricopa will have another drop tonight. This is what everyone is waiting for as the bulk of the votes are here (266k). The first two went to Sinema by a good margin, but the reason 538 only has this race as a lean D at the moment is because it is hard to predict where the outstanding ballots are from in the heterogenous district so McSally's best (and only) hope is that the early ballots were tilted in Sinema's favor while the latter will be in hers just due to some random chance. If Sinema wins big again, it starts to become very hard for McSally to have any sort of chance as she'd need to take the last drop by like 70% to 30%
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

But he wasn't *quite* threatening to take federal aid from those affected by this forest fire, just threatening to take federal aid from the state of California in the future because they are having forest fires.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I think he's referring to this tweet:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1061168803218948096

Wherein Trump seems to not understand how wildfires work, what federal funding for forests goes to, and thinks it is a good idea to tweet this while people are dying and losing their homes.

It is not a good tweet. Even if there was reasoning for behind it that isn't obvious here, it is a bad time to tweet something ike that.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Tester is the most interesting democrat, by far I think. I did a big post on him already and I've gushed about him enough, but him being a -48.2 on the voting vs how a senator from his state should vote and winning reelection without too much difficulty is tremendously impressive. Like you said, he owns his votes and is just upfront with everything and connects with his voters in a way few politicians do. He fought with Trump more than any other red state democrat. Yet, he won and everyone else is gone (besides Manchin).

It is interesting because Manchin was pretty much the opposite example, and these are the two that won and everyone in between them got booted. A lot of that is due to candidate quality. But I think these two also were the most genuine (or at least they seemed to me) and direct with their policy positions, even if they were on opposite ends of the moderate spectrum.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I'm actually a really big fan of moderate to conservative democrats in red states. Big fan of Manchin and Tester and anyone that can help us get numbers to get good legislation passed. I don't care if they vote against us 60% of the time because 40% is a hell of a lot better than 0%.

If Sinema pulls this off, she's a hero. A democrat hasn't won a senate seat in Arizona since 1988. In the governor race, where the democrats nominated someone I quite liked and was super progressive and proud of it, the republicans pounded in our faces by like 15 points. Some of that is incumbency, sure, but maybe in Arizona running someone like Sinema is better for our long term chances.

I just want to win.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

That isn't a hit job! I actually think it was quite smart to put up a conservative democrat in Arizona! She's a gateway democrat. Get them hooked on a little Sinema, thinking 'oh hey this liberalism isn't so bad' and in two years time they'll be mainlining Sanders and out on a corner selling a phonebook to try and get a hit of Warren.

I mean, it isn't like I'm here, posting on B8, thinking that maybe if I'm down enough on Sinema it will somehow retroactively change the votes that were cast.

Heh.

Heh heh.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Ahem.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

And obviously there are a lot of votes Manchin and other senators had to make that Sinema didn't. So it isn't a 1 to 1 comparison, but I think it should at least give an idea of the sort of senator we should expect from her. She's gone as far to say that Manchin is her role model in the senate already, so we're basically getting another one of those.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

One note for Sinema that I discovered after reading into her the past week that I haven't seen a lot of talking about in the places I frequent: I think progressives within our party are going to hate her. Republicans have been running ads of her being some fringe lunatic, tutu wearing anti war activist that is just a younger prettier Bernie Sanders.

I've shown the 538 tracking page where it documents how often senators vote with Trump. Donnelly scored a 53.8. Heitkamp was a 54.4. Manchin, who I'm sure everyone has seen people complaining about at some point, topped the Dems at 60.8. Well, they did that with the house too.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/kyrsten-sinema/

Sinema is a 62.2. She's more conservative than Joe Manchin. And, unlike Joe Manchin, she isn't from some deep red state. Based on partisanship, the ideal senator from Arizona would vote with Trump 59.5 percent of the time. So she's actually more conservative than a replacement senator from Arizona. Jeff Flake was "only" a 84.0. So she is closer to Jeff Flak than any other member of her party outside of Warner, Jones, and Manchin (everyone else that is above 40.4 either just got kicked out of congress or is an independent).

(McSally was a 97.8 so we're definitely rooting for Sinema here)

The National Journal scores her as 57% liberal and 43% conservative. There are only three democrats more conservative than her in the entire house.

The strange thing here is that all the slander and ads against her showing her from when she was like 25 might have worked. A lot of people on like r/politics or Twitter thinks she's going to be some liberal savior. I just think a lot of people are going to be disappointed if she gets in the senate and starts voting.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I don't worry about Coconino coming back in Sinema's favor, but I could see tightening in Maricopa based on past results. Could be red counties overrepresented in last couple batches of votes from the area.

Maricopa is what scares me still.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

red sox 777 posted...

Suprak the Stud posted...

Ok so here are the currently outstanding mail in ballots in Arizona:

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1061083396259045377

The most important bits are:
Maricopa - 266k (going to Sinema currently but this was a Flake district 6 years ago - barely. She is doing well in the mail-ins so far though but it is a heterogenous county and huge so if you're a pessimist like me this is what you're worried about. If Sinema can even do 50-50 at this point though she's won.)
Pima - 60.8k (This is huge for Sinema. Last time they did a 20k update and it boosted Sinema by 7k. It is Sinema's strongest district overall and the fact it is second highest in votes left is very good.)
Pinal - 26.8k (This is good for McSally. She probably ran up her highest numbers here just because it is big and favored McSally 55-41. However, 55-41 isn't going to be nearly enough here, and like 3k came in early today and it barely made a dent in the margins)
Coconico - 9.6k (This county is even better for Sinema that Pima. It went 62-35 her favor on election night so you would expect a good gain here for her)
Navajo - 4k (It was 50-46 McSally on election night, and early voting is leaning Sinema overall so this probably won't do much in either direction)
Mohave - 2k (This is McSally's best county by percentages. 70 to 27 basically. But 2k is such a small number it won't really help at this point)

Overall, this is great for Sinema. Coconico and Pima have 70k between them, while counties favoring McSally only have 33k between them. For McSallly to win, she needs huge numbers in the remaining Maricopa votes. Like...60-40 basically. Possible, depending where the votes are from, but I'd say edge to Sinema for sure.

Coconino was historically a red county, until quite recently. It's the huge rural county in which the Grand Canyon is located. Last election it went blue and there is a trend of counties with national parks going blue, but 62-35 is way above what I would have expected there. Wouldn't count out a lot of the remaining votes going to McSally to make it more respectable a margin in the end.

It went 56-37 Clinton to Trump, and Sinema is a better candidate.

So, nah, I don't think you're right.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Ok so here are the currently outstanding mail in ballots in Arizona:

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1061083396259045377

The most important bits are:
Maricopa - 266k (going to Sinema currently but this was a Flake district 6 years ago - barely. She is doing well in the mail-ins so far though but it is a heterogenous county and huge so if you're a pessimist like me this is what you're worried about. If Sinema can even do 50-50 at this point though she's won.)
Pima - 60.8k (This is huge for Sinema. Last time they did a 20k update and it boosted Sinema by 7k. It is Sinema's strongest district overall and the fact it is second highest in votes left is very good.)
Pinal - 26.8k (This is good for McSally. She probably ran up her highest numbers here just because it is big and favored McSally 55-41. However, 55-41 isn't going to be nearly enough here, and like 3k came in early today and it barely made a dent in the margins)
Coconico - 9.6k (This county is even better for Sinema that Pima. It went 62-35 her favor on election night so you would expect a good gain here for her)
Navajo - 4k (It was 50-46 McSally on election night, and early voting is leaning Sinema overall so this probably won't do much in either direction)
Mohave - 2k (This is McSally's best county by percentages. 70 to 27 basically. But 2k is such a small number it won't really help at this point)

Overall, this is great for Sinema. Coconico and Pima have 70k between them, while counties favoring McSally only have 33k between them. For McSallly to win, she needs huge numbers in the remaining Maricopa votes. Like...60-40 basically. Possible, depending where the votes are from, but I'd say edge to Sinema for sure.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Yes, we all agreed it was delicious and that they did, in fact, have the meats.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I'll be eating at Burger Proletariat for now on, thanks.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

It looks like Pima is not dropping any new votes tonight, which is a shame because that is Sinema's best county. I think they're slightly less than 60k left, which is more than everywhere else combined outside of Maricopa.

There are now five counties that are completely done costing outside of 500 or less provisional ballots they need to go through.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

And I wasn't even being pessimistic in my latest batch! Those are just the raw numbers left. I'm waiting for Pima to drop today and then we'll know how much total is left.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I'm not, but I feel better being pessimistic!

I want Sinema to win more than almost any other senate candidate other than Rosen and Tester, I think. So I'm definitely pulling for her. I've been F5ing all night.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Ok so it was a drop of roughly 80k. You're still looking at 280k or so from Maricopa.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

There's still 362k ballots left to count, most in Maricopa! That 99% is probably "day of ballots". They projections never incorporated the mail ins into those percentages so they've stayed the same for a while.

(This is what is causing confusion with the MAGA crowd)
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Pima hasn't posted yet either today. 22k could go up.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Was that the batch that was supposed to be Sinema or McSally friendly? How many left in Maricopa after today?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Oh Sinema is probably the favorite now, yes.

But we're waiting on the two big Maricopa dumps to be sure. McSally had a bad Pinal dump today, which is good, but she had ok dumps elsewhere so she's actually up 600 or so from start of day (granted, with no Pima incoming yet).

I'm not panicked or anything! I just think it is premature until we see Maricopa tonight!
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

r/the_donald is literally arguing Sinema couldn't have won because the republican governor won too. Like, they can't fathom one person not voting straight republican or straight democratic, and that is their evidence of fraud.

Or "Montana went to Trump by 20 and now it went to Tester? FRAUD" as if a democratic governor didn't just win in 2016 alongside Trump in Montana.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

LordoftheMorons posted...

Dave Wasserman from Cook Political Report thinks it's very likely that Sinema is going to end up winning based on what's come in so far/what's left:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1060979787513192454

Trump's temper tantrum aside, McSally still has a decent chance. It all comes down to Maricopa, and that is a very heterogeneous county with plenty of red pockets. 538 has it as a toss up because of this, although they did say there were reasons it could be lean dem. We'll have a better idea when Maricopa drops batch 2 tonight.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Well, the election in Arizona. He's mostly focused on Florida to this point.

Dancedreamer posted...

I think Trump is showing that if he loses in 2020, he will not peacefully step down.

Democrats need to not just win, but win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by 10 points. Or there is going to be trouble.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/something-looks-weird-in-broward-county-heres-what-we-know-about-a-possible-florida-recount/

Tl;dr what other people have been saying and dumb people in southern Florida might have cost Nelson the election because they were too stupid to work a ballot.

Seriously it isnt that confusing, Florida. The ballot isnt that crazy. When I heard the ballot mightve been too confusing to people I was assuming it was printed on a magic eye poster, not that it followed logically after where the instructions were.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Suprak the Stud posted...

CelesMyUserName posted...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1060993836984324096

Ok so this is the low point of his presidency.

Like, just to be clear, he is trying to undermine elections at this point.

There is no way he is so stupid he doesn't understand the "signatures don't match" is something they account for and correct. You'd have to be intentionally malicious to post something like this, to add doubt to the legitimate results of an election and rile your base to anger and possibly violence. He will likely do the same thing to Montana and Michigan too, because that is what his base is calling for.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

CelesMyUserName posted...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1060993836984324096

Ok so this is the low point of his presidency.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

PhillyD with the best take on the Acosta thing and the Tucker thing. (Skip to 4:29 to jump passed some YouTube drama news)

I never thought about it that way, honestly. Interesting.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Kenri posted...

I live in a pretty conservative area of California (more conservative than the nation on average) and even then it seems like there aren't many republicans around, at least ones roughly my age (20s-30s). The typical conservative won't call themselves that, they'll say they're non-political, a non-voter, a centrist/independent, a libertarian, or a "fiscal conservative" (and I'm friends with a good number of people like that).

But Republican social policies are poisonous among people in that age group. And honestly it's pretty fuckin obvious why.

Yeah thats a good point. Like I said, I know mostly suburban republicans or economic republicans who actually arent big on social issues. Theyll be pro gay marriage, pro legal weed, ambivalent at best on abortion.

But if you point that out they go well yeah but Democrats do this and x y and z are more important.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

TheRock1525 posted...

Rasmussen had Republicans +1 on the generic ballot and are now arguing that they were right.

"bUt ThEy GoT 2016 rIgHt!"

Only off by ten points!

Being outside the margin of error to own the libs.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Corrik posted...

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I used to have a lot of Republican friends, but most of them removed me on Facebook.

One of my best best friends while I was in the Air Force, who was a Libertarian, straight up blocked me, and I have no idea why.

If you guys say shit like you do in here on Facebook, it is not surprising. Calling people evil and fucking morons and shit doesn't go well to normal people.

If you don't do that outside of here, then it is possible they are just the right equivalent to the behavior seen in here which is their problem.

I had a friend who posted something leading up to the election that if you are voting for that bitch Clinton just unfriend me she wants to see cops dead or something along those lines.

I posted I am voting for Clinton and I hope you dont think I want you dead.

Unfriended. Blocked.

We werent best friends but we hung out occasionally and knew each other since high school. It isnt unreasonable to assume Tony encountered something similar where he wasnt the antagonist.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

That might've come off holier than thou than I meant it too. My son is sick so I'm sitting in his room in the middle of the night trying to get him to go back to bed and have just started rambling.

I didn't mean it to come off that way and don't think you're a bad person for wanting to hang out with people that are like minded! I think that is fairly normal! But it can also lead to the divide you notice.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

I grew up in a liberal suburb of Chicago. So far more liberals around me than conservatives. My entire family on my mom's side are basically hippies.

I find it bizarre that you don't know where to find republicans >_> You're talking about them like they're unicorns. They're everywhere! A couple of guys from my high school circle that I still hang out with all the time are republicans (both hispanic), my adopted cousin is a republican and even canvassed for *shudder* Ted Cruz of all people during the primaries (she's black - she's also the only one black woman republican I've ever met in my entire life so this is an outlier), a guy from my college cross country team (white), my current boss (first generation Chinese immigrant who is, quite possibly, the most anti-illegal immigration person I've ever met to the point it makes me uncomfortable and I secretly think he's just testing me to see what my views on immigration are), and then some people like one friendship level down that I only see sporadically, and then even more in my extended network that I rarely see or only talk to on Facebook once in a while.

These are all "suburban" republicans so there is an entire swath of small town republicanism I'm not exposed to and honestly don't know anyone like that. And only a couple of people I know were huge Trump supporters and most everyone else was Rubio or Jeb or Kasich. (A lot of them have since taken the Seph route of "eh could be worse" which is disappointing).

But they're all normal people. Good people that I like talking to. There were a couple that I cut out of my life, sure, for racism or sexism or homophobia. That is definitely a problem amongst republicans and you find some people that identify as republicans because I think that they think that their ideology is more aligned there, and that is certainly concerning. A literal Nazi just ran here in Illinois and garnered a share of the vote that was basically what the last republican challenger in that district got.

But you can't treat all republicans like they're the same. I see sometimes that sort of broad brush like "oh don't give Kasich any cookies for saying one good thing he's just as bad as Trump" when uh, no, not really. I think it is sort of bad to say Kasich and Trump are the same or Jeb! and Steve King are the same or things along that line. There is wrong, which is fine, and then there is harmful, which is not.

I am genuinely shocked you guys aren't friends with any republicans. You probably are and maybe don't know it. I live in a liberal city, grew up in a liberal suburb, come from a liberal family, voted liberal my entire life, but I still run into republicans all the time.

So to answer your question a bit more...just talk to them sometimes, I dunno. Doesn't even have to be about politics. I don't think we're as divided as we like to think and can let the loudest voices drive the conversation. I don't know how to fix people that go to the_donald or 4chan or show up at people's house and chant "we know where you live". They may be lost. Just don't let yourself get to that point. Keep talking to your parents and family. I think you're fine, honestly!

...you're probably just drunk.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

pxlated posted...

Suprak the Stud posted...

pxlated posted...

In a slightly related topic: does anyone see any kind of path towards any sort of reconciliation/return to civility that doesn't take decades?

Large numbers of people on the right and left are absolutely convinced the other is evil, out to get them, etc etc etc. Not everyone is as extreme as what we see in some corners on the internet, but the sentiment is pretty wide spread. And it's not just an age thing either, which I feel like used to be the excuse. Plenty of young people are like this now too.

I hope to god i am wrong and it's not as bad as it seems but damn, how do we go forward from here?

We have probably had this discussion before

I forget, where you the person asking people not to call your parents evil because they vote republican during election night?

I mean that's a bad characterization of that exchange but yes

I called out someone for calling all republicans amoral or whatever and used my parents as an example

Sorry I didn't really read much of the posts for a while because I was following election coverage so my apologies if I mischaracterized that interaction! That was sort of the gist I got from it.

I think what you're doing then is a good way to go about doing it. Don't close yourself off from people who think differently than you and don't automatically treat every republican like they're evil or stupid. It isn't that hard to get along with someone from the opposite side, and people do it all the time. I didn't mean to get you down with the r/the_donald run down if that is where this is coming from. Those are extremists. They're the fringe of the fringe, and you can't look at them and go "jeez we're never going to be united again" any more than you can look at Antifa terrorizing Carlson's wife and go "look how terrible the left is". Most people aren't like that. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of them over at the_donald and that kind of groupthink is a serious threat, but there are a lot more that aren't that.

I think the fact that you see your parents as good people, just wrong in their beliefs, is exactly where we should be. Too many people don't think people can just be wrong any more. They're either dumb, if they're giving them the benefit of the doubt, or evil, if they're not. I haven't lost hope in our country, or our ability to talk to each other. Don't let the crazies get you down, man.
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Legitimate question here, and I don't mean to be snarky so please don't take it that way.

Do any of you have republican friends?
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Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."