Houshphandzadeh wrote:Austin ain't that big

This.

Anyone who says that Texas might turn purple is either (1) a Texas Democrat who is delusionally hopeful or (2) a person who has never been to anywhere in Texas. Even though Austin is liberal, it's a different kind of liberal. Keep Austin Weird and all that.

Hell, even with the liberal strongholds in Northern Virginia, (parts of) Tidewater, and the City of Richmond, Virginia might not hold onto that purple status in 2012. And although our social conservatives are batshit crazy, we ain't got nothing on Texas when it comes to our mainstream Republicans, who can be downright reasonable at times.

Monkeyboy wrote:Obama is wasting his time. The pirate vote clearly goes to Mitt. They are kindred spirits, making loads of money off other people's work, rising up while trampling others down.

Not to mention deregulation of the seas.

jeff2sf wrote:I'm not complaining for someone else, I'm complaining for myself. It's brutal to read this thread right now. It almost makes me want to vote for Romney and I'm sure I don't want to vote for Romney.

You're gonna change your vote just to spite some guy on a message board? That's pretty goddamn weaksauce.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:Obama is wasting his time. The pirate vote clearly goes to Mitt. They are kindred spirits, making loads of money off other people's work, rising up while trampling others down.

Not to mention deregulation of the seas.

and hiding money on the Cayman Islands.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:Austin ain't that big

This.

Anyone who says that Texas might turn purple is either (1) a Texas Democrat who is delusionally hopeful or (2) a person who has never been to anywhere in Texas. Even though Austin is liberal, it's a different kind of liberal. Keep Austin Weird and all that..

The cities are all democrat, not just Austin, and the Rio Grande area is also strongly democrat. Even Houston went for Obama. The population is increasing rapidly in the Rio Grande region. The only thing that can stop the math is if something changes the way the demographic groups are voting or if those demographic groups stop growing. I can't see the latter happening. The first is possible.

Monkeyboy wrote:

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:Austin ain't that big

This.

Anyone who says that Texas might turn purple is either (1) a Texas Democrat who is delusionally hopeful or (2) a person who has never been to anywhere in Texas. Even though Austin is liberal, it's a different kind of liberal. Keep Austin Weird and all that..

The cities are all democrat, not just Austin, and the Rio Grande area is also strongly democrat. Even Houston went for Obama. The population is increasing rapidly in the Rio Grande region. The only thing that can stop the math is if something changes the way the demographic groups are voting or if those demographic groups stop growing. I can't see the latter happening. The first is possible.

And despite all that, Obama still lost by nearly a million votes. And that's with a depressed turnout for a mediocre GOP candidate who was definitely going to lose at the national level.

Doll Is Mine wrote:It'll be interesting to see how the red states evolve in the next few election cycles. Already, we're hearing that states like Tennessee and Texas could turn purple at some point.

I can't imagine this is true... it's only just swung definitively red. Just like Kentucky and West Virginia, it was blue in 76, 92 and 96, filled with your classic Appalachia fiscally liberal/populist, socially conservative Democrats (WV also went blue in 1980 and 1988). The exact demographic that has swung irretrievably red for the foreseeable future.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:Anyone who says that Texas might turn purple is either (1) a Texas Democrat who is delusionally hopeful or (2) a person who has never been to anywhere in Texas. Even though Austin is liberal, it's a different kind of liberal. Keep Austin Weird and all that.

Or a Republican strategist who either (1) just wants the national RNC to send some money his way or (2) genuinely sees the handwriting on the wall:

http://www.absoluterights.com/absolute- ... ning-blue/

I don't see how the math can be denied. They've turned all the democrat-voting white people into republicans. There's nowhere else to get votes as the Latino and Black voters grow. If they don't start getting votes from those groups, Texas will go purple and then blue. They have to change the way those groups are voting. I'm not saying they can't do it, just that it must be done to stop the trend.

It's a mistake to lump Texas and Tennessee together. Texas is now a minority white state. Of course, voters are still majority white, but that will change. Texas is also growing rapidly, so one can expect its demographics to shift rapidly and not in entirely predictable ways. One thing that matters is what happens to people who move there--do they take expectations for the kinds services and education that they may find in say California with them, as they did when they moved to Colorado, or do the go native? It's also important to note that while Texas isn't Austin, it isn't Dallas, or Houston, or the empty places in between either.

uncle milt wrote:

as he picked at a vegetarian breakfast burrito

p*ssy

Maybe it was a burrito made out of vegetarians, like a Soylent Green precursor.

jeff2sf wrote:She bought the iPhone last month. She's still not happy someone not working/on welfare has one.

Perhaps you should explain the possibility that said iPhone may not have been obtained in a legal fashion. Things "fall of the truck", "mysteriously disappear" from cars, etc.

Monkeyboy wrote:I don't see how the math can be denied. They've turned all the democrat-voting white people into republicans. There's nowhere else to get votes as the Latino and Black voters grow. If they don't start getting votes from those groups, Texas will go purple and then blue. They have to change the way those groups are voting. I'm not saying they can't do it, just that it must be done to stop the trend.

If you're talking 20-25 years down the road, okay. But that didn't seem to be the context.

By then, in addition to Texas being minority white, you'll (hopefully) see more economic diversity. And voter participation is correlated with income and education level. So yeah, Texas could be purple then. Although my guess is that it's highly possible that the parties won't have the same identities that far down the road, so it might not even play out that way.

Monkeyboy wrote:

Doll Is Mine wrote:It'll be interesting to see how the red states evolve in the next few election cycles. Already, we're hearing that states like Tennessee and Texas could turn purple at some point.

I read something about Texas recently, though I don't remember where. It pointed out that people have been saying Texas would turn purple for a long time now and it hasn't happened. Whites in the state have steadily moved to the republican party, offsetting the gains made by the increased black and Latino votes. But I have to think there's a point where there are no more whites to turn republican and the increasing % of blacks and Latinos will push the state purple. In fact, I could see it happening quickly because it will be difficult for republicans to pick up more votes. Of course, one strong Latino republican could pull Latinos to the red part of the ledger. If I was a republican strategist, I would be desperately looking for someone like that.

Silver wrote about it recently. Could have been that.

@fivethirtyeight: [new article] Obama's Lead Looks Stronger in Polls That Include Cellphones http://t.co/hWrWvldj

Here's the thing--before Texas goes purple, the GOP will have to evolve. Or die. I know most Republicans deny the existence of evolution (which is curious, considering how much the theory of evolution has in common with free market economic theories, spontaneous order and all that but I digress) but people and institutions can sometimes be quite creative when their survival is at stake. Eventually, someone is likely to figure out that you don't win in a winner take all system by tossing people out of your coalition.

There are lots of plausible scenarios of how this will happen--one I've mentioned here in the past is a re-division between a cosmopolitan party (pro-free trade; pro-immigration; some combination of liberal/neo-con foreign policy; permissive on social issues) and a parochial party (ambivalent at best about trade, limit immigration, isolationist in foreign policy, socially conservative). At this point, the Democratic party is the more likely home of the cosmopolitan party, owing more to its strengths in the cosmopolitan parts of the country, and if that happens, you would expect to see the cosmopolitan party maintaining Democratic positions regarding taxation and size of government.

But there's nothing inevitable about it. You could see something like what was going from the 50s to the 70s or so, where on most issues there wasn't much difference between the parties, except on matters of style. Or you could see a third party emerging from increasingly dissatisfied country club types (like our own JH) who grow increasingly unhappy with a party that takes the Bachmanns and the Huckabees seriously. Or you could see social conservatives who have gotten exactly nothing out of their engagement with politics turning away from politics--before Reagan, Southern evangelicals just didn't get involved with politics much. And why should they continue--over the three decades of their political involvement, porn is everywhere, sex and language on TV is far worse than it used to be, gays are getting married, there's no real demand for prayer in public schools, more and more children are born to unwed parents, people are increasingly tired of the drug war, and as a whole, people are turning away from tradition religion. The only thing they can point to are some successes in some states in limiting access to abortion.

I made similar predictions in 2008, and obviously, none of this is happening yet, and all I can do is point to the recession and how its made it possible for the Republicans to hold on a bit longer. It's an interesting counter factual to contemplate--what if economic growth had come back more strongly in 2009 or 2010? Democrats lose some of their majority in the House in 2010, but pick up a seat or two in the Senate. Obama cruises to re-election (the Republican field would've been even weaker than it was). Democrats gain a bit back from the 2010 losses in the House.

(By the way, you could've played this game with Bush--what if Bush decided not to invade Iraq or acted more decisively during Katrina? Then you'd probably have a Republican (but not John McCain) winning in 2008 and probably slim Republican majorities in the House. and Senate

jerseyhoya wrote:Things aren't going too great but the people calling the race over are dumb

Unless Romney can magically win over women, blacks and latinos in the next month I would bet that the race is probably over. Also Romney is losing most of the key swing states like Florida and Virginia. He's already pulled out of Pennsylvania and there is no way he can win Ohio.

jerseyhoya wrote:Wonder how long it's going to take the CW to catch back up to the fact that Obama's bounce is gone and we're back to a 1-2 point race in spite of everything that's happened the past three weeks

1-2 points? Obama has been shown to be up as big as 8% depending on what poll you cite.

Short of some late breaking unexpected news story that buries Obama its his election to win. I remember in 2004 around this time thinking that GWB had a good chance of being defeated, but in reality, its extremely hard to unseat an incumbent no matter how incompetent.

75 percent still per Nate Sliver

Also, the Voter ID fiasco(s) seems to be backfiring comically. It's really firing up the minority voting base (admittedly anecdotally). The 47 percenters, if you will.