Jump to content

Blue Wave/Red Wave?


RedRocket1647545505

Recommended Posts

I don't think anybody could have predicted that outcome. Still It's not a bad start, giving the other side oversight of the executive office and resistance to the senate is good for the country as a whole.

 

My only real concern is - this election basically saw moderate republicans losing their house seats to democrats, and the republicans keeping their seats are basically trump supporters and far right to extremist on the spectrum. So where does that leave the moderate conservative voter if their party no longer wants them? It's interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not quite sure how Dewine and Brown each won.

 

Name recognition... I think if more people knew that Cordray had been director of the CFPB under Obama, and had played a significant role in pissing off all manner of bankster scum, he'd have won by an even larger margin than Brown did.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Name recognition... I think if more people knew that Cordray had been director of the CFPB under Obama, and had played a significant role in pissing off all manner of bankster scum, he'd have won by an even larger margin than Brown did.

 

His "nice tough guy" ads didn't help either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There were ads? Couldn't tell you the last time I turned on the tv, or listed to broadcast radio.

 

oh there were ads, not on social media oddly (dewine had a bunch of youtube ads), but they were there. It's like him waiting in line for coffee, and giving a dog water on a hot day. Real hokey non-attack stuff.

 

Meanwhile Dewine was swinging for the bleachers with attack ads about untested rape kits and drug use (both of which have since been debunked as outright lies and half truths).

 

This race was Codray's to lose and lose it he did. gerrymandering played a big part and I don't know if he could have overcome it but he sure didn't try.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was really hoping cordray would win, and I thought he won each and every debate, but Ohio is a red state.

This will sound racist but I'm going to say it anyway, obama can not deliver the black vote. He couldn't do it for hilary and he can't do it for the downstream democrats.

Brown is the only dem who won and I feel that rennaci was soooo dirty that I would have been REALLY shocked if he would have lost

I agree the gerrymandering is horrible here in Ohio but i don't know how it can be fixed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Honest question; how does gerrymandering effect a governor's race when it's a popular vote within the whole state?

 

I'm glad you asked and the answer is it does and it doesn't.

 

On its own gerrymandering can't effect the outcome of the popular vote. However, when you couple it with voter suppression tactics and malappropriation it can make a bigger difference, esp when each district is responsible for overseeing the registration.

 

Think of it like the military campaign of divide and conquer. If you can gerrymander the districts so that the republicans are in control and oversee the polling places, they are going to be more strict about enforcing something like exact match registration. I saw this first hand because when I went to vote, my registration didn't match my hyphenate last name and they turned me away, I had to come back with several bills in my name showing my current address. Even though by law they have to accept only one proof, they refused to let me vote without seeing one with each spelling of my name. Fortunately I came prepared for this, but I watched others get turned away for similar things, some which I felt were illegal and some which were correct.

 

I bring up republicans and voter suppression because that is an exclusive tactic of the Republican Party right now. Low voter turn out has favored the Republican Party since the 1960's, and they have been aggressive about voter suppression for that long. Democrats usually benefit from a high voter turn out, so there is no incentive to suppress votes, although they do gerrymander districts as well. It's funny to think but a gerrymandered democratic district by its nature is likely the most fair voting district because that is what the democrats are incentivized to do, give everyone a vote and get as many people to legally vote as they can (illegal votes would undermine this and allow the GOP the moral superiority to push fir suppression legislation).

 

In 2010, the Republican Party launched a grass roots campaign to gerrymander as many local voting districts as they possibly could, knowing they would be safe from redistricting until 2020. And it has had a tremendous effect. In past elections, even with pre 2010 gerrymandering, a popular vote margin like this midterm election had would have completely turned the house and senate blue by a wide margin. But in this case it pushed a thin majority in the house and actually caused a loss of ground in the senate. Coupled with a majority republican controlled polling districts it allowed voter suppression measures like roll purging and exact name matching to have real teeth.

 

In this case, it's tough to say how much was voter manipulation and how much was Corddray just running a shit campaign because the margin of loss in the popular vote was significant, but in smaller races like O'Connor vs Balderson voter manipulation made a huge difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If we say Trump is in bed with the Russians and the Russians influenced the presidential election, then how do you stop that without ensuring each person is a valid, breathing citizen who votes?

 

Data security measures and IT. Foreign powers are going to try to hack our voting machines whether they are working with a candidate or not.

 

With respect to collusion with trump, that is more about a candidate using the intelligence branch of a foreign power to influence living breathing people in order to advance that foreign power’s agenda. In this case that was reducing sanctions and repealing the magninsky act, whic they got - the only question left was how high up did the plan go?

 

Voter fraud isn’t really a big problem in the US. It is there but the ROI and overall impact on it is usually very small so that alone is incentive for candidates and political parties not to do it. Voter suppression on the other hand affects 100’s of thousands of people and does have a distinct effect, and doesn’t cost a lot to put in place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...