{"id":19237,"date":"2014-11-05T01:23:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T09:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19237"},"modified":"2014-11-05T01:47:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T09:47:16","slug":"democrats-get-creamed-like-a-13-year-olds-coffee-the-2014-elections-discussion-thread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=19237","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Get Creamed Like A 13-Year-Old’s Coffee: The 2014 Elections Discussion Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"coffee-creamer\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Thank goodness I live in Oregon, where getting stoned will soon be legal.<\/p>\n

And it’s not just that this year is a bad map for us. We lost Massachusetts!<\/em> That’s just pathetic.<\/p>\n

(We lost Massachusetts? Seriously, what will it take to get Mass Democrats to stop running Martha Coakley for high office? After this, it’s hard to see what more important position the Worst Candidate In The World has to lose, unless she somehow manages to get nominated for President.)<\/p>\n

Ezra Klein<\/a> makes an interesting distinction between Democrats and liberals:<\/p>\n

The night had few bright spots for Democrats \u2014 but there were some for liberals. The personhood ballot initiatives lost in Colorado and North Dakota. Marijuana was legalized in D.C. and Oregon (and we’re still waiting on Alaska). The minimum wage was raised in Arkansas, Illinois and Nebraska. Washington state expanded background checks on guns. “So voters want a higher minimum wage, legal pot, abortion access and GOP representation,” tweeted FiveThirtyEight’s Ben Casselman. “Ok then.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Will this election have disastrous results? Maybe. It’ll certainly lead to a more right-wing judiciary than we might have gotten otherwise; Obama blew it by not pushing much harder on this issue for the last six years. Obama’s veto power will hopefully constrain the worst Republican impulses.<\/p>\n

One interesting question is, will Senate Democrats abuse the filibuster as much as Republicans did? I hope they do, for two reasons. First, the alternative is a situation where Republicans, when elected, can pass legislation on a simple majority, while Democrats require a supermajority. That’s the worst possible outcome. And secondly, because if the Democrats abuse the filibuster as heavily as Republicans have, I expect the Republicans will be pretty quick to eliminate the fillibuster altogether, and that would basically be good for democracy.<\/p>\n

In any case, congratulations to all my Republican friends. May your party prove to be much better (and more humane) governors than I expect.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Duncan at “This is So Gay” argues<\/a> that Dems are reaping what we’ve sown:<\/p>\n

True, the Republicans caused the 2008 depression, though with Democratic collaboration and connivance. The deregulation was as much a Clinton project as it was the Republicans’, but then Clinton like Obama is a Reagan Republican. That the recovery was so sluggish (to put it kindly) was as much due to Obama’s incompetence and collaboration with the Republicans — remember his giving them huge tax breaks for the rich in his stimulus package even before the GOP had demanded them? The recovery (like the fabled ‘prosperity’ under Clinton) mainly benefited the rich; there was no trickle-down to the bulk of the population, but who cares? Certainly not the Democrats’ apologists. Remember the Democrats’ letting the Republicans deploy threats of filibuster to block important legislation, so that a non-constitutional supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate was needed to pass anything. And then remember Obama’s attempts to get rid of Social Security, his deficit commission packed by him with deficit hawks — even so, they couldn’t reach the desired destructive consensus, so Obama simply accepted the chairmen’s report as if it were the Commission’s conclusions. Guess why.<\/p>\n

And that’s leaving aside the relentless assaults on civil liberties, the surveillance, the stomping on dissent, the war on whistleblowers, new wars and escalation of the old ones. This doesn’t mean Obama hasn’t done one or two things right, I suppose, but it’s not at all unreasonable that many Americans, including Democrats, should be unenthusiastic about him and the party.[…] <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

And a victory for Emily’s List: There Are 100 Women in Congress for the First Time Ever<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thank goodness I live in Oregon, where getting stoned will soon be legal. And it’s not just that this year is a bad map for us. We lost Massachusetts! That’s just pathetic. (We lost Massachusetts? Seriously, what will it take … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19237"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19242,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19237\/revisions\/19242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}