What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[DGuller]

Political correctness almost by its definition seems to imply lack of factual correctness.  If you're just plain correct, why qualify it? 

[Razgovory]

Political correctness almost by its definition seems to imply lack of factual correctness.  If you're just plain correct, why qualify it?

To create a straw man to topple.

[Eddie Teach]

Political correctness almost by its definition seems to imply lack of factual correctness.  If you're just plain correct, why qualify it?

Except it's used in regard to subjective questions.

[Admiral Yi]

Except it's used in regard to subjective questions.

This.  How to treat someone is not an empirical question.

[Admiral Yi]

It's not.  The reason is relevant.

Conceded.  But that still doesn't carve out a positive definition of PC core values that excludes my Yanipoulipoolo example.

[jimmy olsen]

GOP won the special election in Arizona today, but this was in a district that shewed white and elderly and this doesn't bode well for them.



It probably won't get covered this way, but this is arguably the worst special congressional election result yet for the GOP

In a special with relatively unremarkable candidates in an R+13 seat, Dems appear to have hit at least 47%. Only 92 of the House GOP's 240 seats have a @CookPolitical PVI score more Republican than #AZ08.

Wanna know how weak Lesko winning by 6 would be? It's a *19* point swing off the partisan baseline in AZ-8 towards the Dems. The average swing in federal elections before tonight was 17 points.

Such a result would also not be too *surprising*, given that it would be fairly consistent with pre-election polls, as well as with other special elections (e.g. PA-18) that showed a massive swing toward Democrats. But still would be a bad, discomforting data point for the GOP.

[dps]

Politeness is about censoring the tone of a statement.  Political correctness is about censoring the content of a statement.

[jimmy olsen]

Let's hope it continues

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/arizona-8-special-election-result/

Another Special Election, Another Really Bad Sign For The GOP
The Republican won in Arizona's 8th District, but not by as much as she should have.
By Nate Silver

Filed under Special Elections

0425 AZ08reax_REP 4×3
ILLUSTRATION BY FIVETHIRTYEIGHT / GETTY IMAGES
One might describe Arizona's 8th Congressional District as ... nondescript. Covering portions of Phoenix's northern and western suburbs, including the Arizona Cardinals' home stadium, the district isn't all that geographically or demographically distinct, containing a largely older, largely white population of professionals and retirees. The area has traditionally been extremely Republican, having voted for John McCain by 22 points in 2008, Mitt Romney by 25 points in 2012, and President Trump by 21 points in 2016. It has a growing number of Hispanics, but Hispanics make up a considerably smaller share of the voting population than of its population overall.

Nor was there anything especially unusual about the candidates who competed in the special election there on Tuesday — Republican Debbie Lesko, a state senator, and Democrat Hiral Tipirneni, a doctor. Each won their respective primaries by solid-but-not-overwhelming margins, and each raised about the same amount of money for their general election campaigns. They're competent, uncontroversial candidates who are representative of the sorts of people who will be nominated throughout the country in the midterms this November.

In other words, Arizona 8 doesn't make for a lot of headlines. There was no Roy Moore equivalent in the district — and not even a Greg Gianforte. The district moved ever-so-slightly toward Democrats between 2012 and 2016, but it wasn't a place where the political trends were changing all that rapidly, or where Democrats actually expected to be within striking distance (as they did in Georgia's highly educated, suburban 6th Congressional District, where Democrat Jon Ossoff lost to Republican opponent Karen Handel in a special election last year). Arizona 8 is essentially a "generic", but very red, congressional district.

But that very lack of distinctiveness probably makes Arizona 8 a more reliable data point. There are no particular contingencies related to the candidates or the campaigns or the demographics of the district that complicate the outcome or give many excuses for it.

And although the Republican, Lesko, is the apparent winner, the election represents another really bad data point for the GOP. Lesko's margin of victory was only 5 percentage points in a district that typically votes Republican by much, much more than that. The outcome represented a 20-point swing toward Democrats relative to the district's FiveThirtyEight partisan lean, which is derived from how the it voted for president in 2016 and 2012 relative to the country.

The silver lining for Republicans isn't that Lesko won. If Republicans are winning by only 5 points in this sort of extremely red district in November, dozens of more competitive seats will flop to Democrats — more than enough for them to take the House. Rather, the "good" news is that Republicans have endured lots of this sort of bad news already. Before Tuesday night, Democrats had outperformed their partisan baseline by an average of 17 points in Congressional special elections so far this cycle. So the Arizona result was only slightly worse for Republicans than previous ones.

The bigger question is what to make of the disparity between the overwhelming swing toward Democrats so far in special election results — which would imply a Democratic wave on par with the historic Republican years of 1994 and 2010 — and the considerably more modest one suggested by the generic Congressional ballot, which shows Democrats ahead by only 7 points and implies that the battle for House control is roughly a toss-up.1 One plausible answer is that the generic ballot will shift further toward Democrats once voters become more engaged with the campaign in their respective districts and pollsters switch over to likely voter models. Still, both the generic ballot and special election results (when taken in the aggregate) are fairly reliable indicators. Rather than choosing between them, it's best to consider both. That means entertaining a wide range of scenarios that run between Republicans narrowly holding onto the House and an epic Democratic wave.

[Barrister]

It makes me sad to see Timmy O blatantly cheering for the Democrats.

[Valmy]

Why? We are lovely people.

[garbon]

It makes me sad to see Timmy O blatantly cheering for the Democrats.

I mean, one basically has to, now that the Republicans have revealed they don't actually have any principles that they won't sacrifice in the name of Trump.

[Habbaku]

Yeah. At this point, the majority of the GOP have ripped off the Scooby-Doo villain masks and are pretending it's okay to go around terrorizing the populace in the open.

On the one hand, at least they've dropped the semblance of caring about things like deficits or a coherent foreign policy. On the other hand, I don't have to vote for them.

[Razgovory]

It makes me sad to see Timmy O blatantly cheering for the Democrats.

Well, he is living in the North Korean crosshairs, and most of the Republican party now despises Hispanics.

I don't like Pence.  He's a homophobic asshole, but I don't think he'd start a war on the Korean Peninsula, or destroy the Justice Department, or inspire Nazis to kill people.  Pence I can deal with.

[frunk]

I don't like Pence.  He's a homophobic asshole, but I don't think he'd start a war on the Korean Peninsula, or destroy the Justice Department, or inspire Nazis to kill people.  Pence I can deal with.

I haven't seen any indication that the Repubs are getting behind Pence.  In fact it looks like they are either retiring or doubling down on Trump.

[Razgovory]

I don't like Pence.  He's a homophobic asshole, but I don't think he'd start a war on the Korean Peninsula, or destroy the Justice Department, or inspire Nazis to kill people.  Pence I can deal with.

I haven't seen any indication that the Repubs are getting behind Pence.  In fact it looks like they are either retiring or doubling down on Trump.

I haven't seen any indication of that either, I was just stating a preference.