I'm having mood swings about the results that are unrelated to anything coherent in the news. Despair last spring, gradually turning positive to blithe confidence in holding both houses over the summer, and now back to despair again.
News about Walker and Oz is funny, but won't be enough to save us.
If Fetterman wins, he will fill the gap left by Charlie Rangel for Progressive Members of Congress With Surprisingly Strong Resemblances to Muppets. For Rangel, it was largely the eyebrows, but Fetterman's entire gestalt is muppety.
I'm still doing a batch of Vote Forward letters. California, Pennsylvania, & Georgia.
Just saw an article "If Val Demings wins Florda...", checked the polls - she's consistently five points behind. Damned social media endorphins.
It's a weird election, and the various indicators have been pointing in different directions and fluctuating a lot. At this point I think it's most likely that we narrowly hold the Senate and narrowly lose the House, but really anything is possible.
Locally things are actually looking pretty positive. Progressive and moderate legislative candidates are way ahead in fundraising, as is Peltola. Alaska's often out of phase with the rest of the country politically, though, so it's hard to extrapolate anything from that.
I'm grumpy that the Warnock campaign has sent me upwards of 600 requests for money after I contributed the legal maximum to them.
Oops, I would appreciate an email address cleanup on 9.
I've been getting texts from some Florida campaigns (Demings and the less legitimate-seeming former data analyst) and I can't understand why they are contacting me and not others given I'm nowhere near Florida and never have been. If it's a national push, seems like I should see other non-local texts.
I've given to some seemingly close campaigns before and it's felt in the end like I could have lit money on fire for the same benefit. So I've only donated to non-profits/charities since.
11: I feel like a lot of campaigns are more getting their own or their friends' companies paid for fundraising services than about winning. (See: opponents of Mitch McConnell.) So you might see some odd decisions made by some of them.
Never heard political ads for a Republican incumbent in Utah before, so at least Mike Lee is nervous.
Interesting, I didn't realize McMullin was running against him as an independent. I bet Lee is reacting to McMullin coming ahead for the first time in a poll Oct 8-11.
The state Dems threw their support behind McMullin. Lee could lose it, even if his dad did run BYU and his party says R.
Yeah, I was just coming back having seen the Dems endorsed him.
what you all have to say about various races and Hershel Walker
If we're using the traditional black/white/Chinese/Mexican taxonomy, Herschel Walker is definitely black.
The state Dems threw their support behind McMullin. Lee could lose it, even if his dad did run BYU and his party says R.
I'm a bit like LB in 2. I was fairly sanguine over the summer because I was confident that neither the press nor the pols nor the polls appreciated the backlash to Dobbs, and because the decline in gas was working as expected. But since Labor Day the news has been much worse--massive GOP spending has hurt the positives for candidates who were leading comfortably like Fetterman, gas ticked back up*, and it's become clear that voters cannot fucking comprehend that voting for anti-democratic Republicans for SoS and governor is counterproductive--and I've grown pessimistic.
Regardless of exactly what happens with the DC races, I'm now certain that many, many awful Rs will win statewide office even as they practically wave flags about the awful things they'll do.
In 2004, I was in conversation with a good friend, a few days before the election. She said that she hadn't decided yet who she was going to vote for, between Kerry and W. My wee brain could not handle the idea of an otherwise-intelligent person being undecided and I kind of short-circuited out.
We are still good friends, and she's now in New York, and we were catching up, and I made a Dr. Oz joke, and she didn't know who he is. This time I'm not exactly short-circuiting out, but I do despair a little bit.
Sometimes I think that the whole problem is that we stopped teaching civics class, and now people think of politics as a hobby or interest, where there's no moral valence to being apolitical. We ought to be indoctrinating high school kids with the idea that being informed is part of being a grown up. But then I despair at how hard it is for a person to develop an appropriately critical eye for how the news is reported. Anyway, back to Herschel.
I remember being at a conference that had paid Ezra Klein to fill their usual slot on the state of national politics, in I think 2016, and he said that structural factors meant we would likely have a Democratic President and Republican Congress for a long time to come.
That would be shitty but at least a relatively static situation if we didn't have to contend with state-level GOP turning their own states into autocracies.
Sometimes I think that the whole problem is that we stopped teaching civics class
Did we stop doing that? I certainly took it in high school (though they called it "Government") and it was a graduation requirement.
One semester of US Government is also a graduation requirement for the school district here. I just checked because I realized my own teens hadn't taken it yet, but there's still time.
I thought "Civics" was more like "citizenship" and while it overlaps with social studies or government classes, it had a more moralistic tone. And moralizing in the mid-20th century was never problematic, so no harm there!
Hm, I always assumed "Civics" was just an old-fashioned name for the class we knew as "Government."
@Lizardbreath
I think that high school students should take:
9th Grade - Practical Government (different branches of government and their responsibilities) - Federal, State, Local (City, County, Zoning Board, etc.) It should be detailed. What is a zoning board? Where does it meet? What is the local form of government? How the local government's budget determined? What does the state judicial system look like?
10th Grade - Contracts (State-specific), Criminal Law (State-specific)
11th Grade - Constitutional Law (Federal), Constitutional Law (State-specific)
12th Grade - Administrative Law (Federal), Administrative Law (State-specific)
Replace Civics (if you have it) or History (if you don't). These things don't need to be analyzed at the law school level of detail, but they should read major cases and think about the rationale behind them. Maybe do some E&Es.
What do you think?
It's worth pointing out that people use to say more information would solve problems and it's pretty obvious that was about as wrong as you can be without investing in a Ponzi scheme.
I always assumed it would be accurate information.
There's way more accurate information than ever before.
don't know how, or don't want to know how.
My naturalization interview test:
"So, you're a college student. Tell me about the US government"
"There's a system of checks and balances between the three..."
"OK."
Lo-rise office building on the outskirts of St Louis, maybe six weeks after sending in the application there. This after years of dealing with the much less effective Chicago office without any outcome beyond a lost application and lessons in waiting in the airless anterooms.
Just gave to Warnock & Abrams.
21.2: that surprises me because I knew who Dr. Oz was before he got into politics and I'm not exactly a big fan of Oprah or daytime TV.
The Arizona Republican Party would like to remind you to always check for nearby preschools before masturbating in public, unless you're "really stressed".
21: Not knowing who Dr. Oz is when you're not in a position to vote for or against him seems a lot more forgivable than not knowing who to vote for for President. There really is a level at which political interest becomes a hobby, and I'm OK declaring other-district elections to be there, even if they are structurally important.
37- Should have gone with, "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate..."
I've just been deleting political text after political text about local shit I can't make myself care about but a Beto person caught me in a moment of pretending something might go right and I gave like $25 and once you give anything you get, you know, lots and lots more texts.
40: oh, absolutely. It's not actually a moral failing. But I still have trouble understanding how it happens.
OTOH, I see lots of cars and can't say anything about them besides their color and whether they're big or little. So I understand how to not pay attention to something ubiquitous.
The one thing I learned from 70s cop shows is that being able to accurately describe a car is a key life skill.
The thing I learned from 80s cop shows is that Shatner has a great hairpiece.
I guess I also got some mixed messages about cocaine.
Sometimes I think that the whole problem is that we stopped teaching civics class
Kai has started high school, and the only class he's really into is civics. Last week in the car he said something to the effect that every class period civics almost gives him a rage stroke (bc of the patent idiocy of how current Americans ignore/distort the constitution; his example was the idea that there's no right to abortion when the 10th amendment clearly says rights not mentioned in the constitution are still rights), and yesterday he was saying to AB that civics is way more important than English class.
So is there a difference between his civics class and a government class?
My primary reaction to 29 is, if everything people say should be mandatory in high school were, they'd need to be in school 22 hours a day.
But more specifically: why on earth a year devoted to administrative law? Either at state or federal level, that's incredibly niche and useless for most people.
48: I'm talking ex recto, but I think "civics" focuses more on "what you need to know / do as a good citizen", whereas "government" can retreat to the more descriptive, like a remedial poly sci class. I remember my government class in Texas devoted at least one session to British government.
(The teacher put a box on his podium with "TRADITION" written on it, so that when anyone asked why something worked such and such a way in the UK, he would wordlessly point to it.)
48: Not so far. Less than 2 months in, though.
BTW, his teacher is literally the baseball coach, so at least some traditions survive.
51.2: Possibly the same for me, now that you mention it. It was definitely the football coach who taught World History.
I took American History from a guy who got cut from the Kansas City Chiefs. He was the football coach and a person of the opinion that Nixon was just fine.
My high school had a U.S. government/civics class whose actual title I can't remember, but it was clearly about US government with an eye to being a responsible citizen rather than government in general. We did a model Congress activity where we picked a current member of Congress - or maybe drew names from a hat? - and pretended to be them for a brief series of committee + full House/Senate sessions. It was kind of fun but also depressing in retrospect that some of the people we pretended to be, nearly 30 years ago, are still in office. I drew Schumer, then a member of the House.
@49 But that's the problem - its not niche. The executive agencies are responsible for most of what we think of as "government." And yet people have no idea how they operate or their legal basis.
People should know the difference between formal rulemaking, notice and comment rulemaking, adjudication, interpretive rulemaking, and policy statements.
They should know what arbitrary and capricious means in the context of the APA. Why Chevron deference is important.
They should know what the major executive agencies are and the roles of these agencies.
So much of contemporary politics is utter bullshit that could be avoided if the population knew what was and was not feasible.
I want people to be able to see something happen in DC and know why it happened and who was responsible.
Well, Kayne is going to be fleeced for millions by people who want to have you think the answer is "Teh Jews" and would prefer you home school your children to avoid contamination with post-1865 ideas.
The Trump docs scandal would get more traction if the DOJ ran adds with the slogan "I'm replevin' it!"
Why Chevron deference is important.
In a few years, this guidance will be obsolete. I'd rather they learn why democracy is important.
But I guess that will be obsolete in a few years, too.
59: So i fear.
And per LB and others above, my trajectory on midterms has been similar.
I hate everything and everyone too much to elaborate at the moment (also dead thread), but Ian Milhiser had the best summary.
I very much hope that my nation does not do permanent harm to itself by electing an authoritarian party, because the non-authoritarian party happens to be in charge during a period of global economic disruptions.
Nate Silver, with the frustrating news about the Senate forecast: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senate-is-a-toss-up/