Although I do worry that every local race all across the country will now start dunning me for donations. There ought to be a rule that you only get to harass your electorate for money.
I’m glad Warnock won, but look at the numbers: 48.6% of Georgians voted for the blithering idiot, it’s no wonder he had to beg for help. Imagine if the Republicans had nominated a marginally competent candidate, or if the Republican governor of the state had actively tried to promote their party’s candidate — we’d be in trouble. I don’t see much cause to celebrate squeaking by in a race that should have been a cakewalk.
Well, Walker boosted his campaign tremendously with his screed on vampires vs werewolves. It was so phenomenally effective that even Obama commented on it.
Sun Tsu said it best, never interrupt an adversary when he’s making a mistake. Walker excelled in making around a mistake a minute.
That over 48% of the voters thought that was acceptable gives me qualms as to the continued viability of our nuclear armed government.
Why do I anticipate our nuking hurricanes in the near future?
It would be nice if we had something to vote FOR rather than just something to vote against.
I quit giving money when I discovered that the person running against Susan Colins had so much money she couldn’t spend it all, last election, and she was still begging me for money the day before the election.
As Warnock pointed out, these results are despite widespread attempts at voter suppression.
The fact that Walker got that much , along the electoral success of other right-wing mouth-breathers (e.g. Reagan, Dubya, Trump), is a scathing indictment of the American people if ever their was one. They illustrate the great irredeemable flaw in democracy: The voters are mostly fucking morons who shouldn’t be trusted with a spoon, much less political power. We ought to leave the operation of civilization in the hands of educated experts rather than requiring a mother-may-I from the drooling, knuckle-dragging rabble, but noooooooo… Not heeding to the fickle, hopeless stupid whims of a population of couch potatoes and high-school dropouts is somehow wrong. No wonder the upper class is running the show.
@ 2
Democrats: “(GASP!) BLASPHEMY! You’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the half-assed, toothless, and performative because we don’t really believe in progress anymore than the Republicans. That’s how Trump won! Get thee behind me, you filthy Bernie Bro!!!”
#2 Ronald Couch…Yes!
It disturbs me greatly that I know I would vote for a Walker or a Ted Cruz or M. T. Green, if she/he were running as a reliable Democratic vote. As things stand, right now, a reliable Democratic vote is more important, to me, than the quality of that vote.
It also bothers me that I’m pretty sure those voting for Republicans, see me, a Democratic voter, to be just as dangerous to our republic, as I see them.
What I’d like to be voting for is a socialist, who wants to improve life for the average citizen. Food, housing, medical care, living wage for all…
Rich
Probably too late to fix the headline to “Raphael”, but maybe if possible…
Anyway, at least this should mean Manchin and Sinema probably won’t be in the news as much, and in a couple of years I look forward to voting against her in the next primary. Hopefully next time they find someone a smidge more electable to run against Sinema.
As a practical matter I doubt it’ll mean much to the next gridlocked, do-nothing Congress. Have fun voting for judges, Senator.
Only daily emails from Warnock? Try hourly or even more from other big names for Warnock. I’m now getting emails from Katie Porter where she asks for suggestions. Number one on my list: change campaign funding laws. It’s gotten ridiculous enough that even some politicians decry how fund raising takes over the job.
Georgia is the homeland of dirt poor ignorance, and the biggest piece of white trash in congress. It’s the epitome of the dirty south.
Folks, it’s tribalism, not ignorance. Walker gave sufficient evidence that he be relied on to vote with the Team. Nothing else mattered to those 48.6%.
Of course yes, in a broader sense, there’s a lot of ignorance behind the tribalism. But I doubt there was any great ignorance about Walker himself.
Important takeaway: scandals and incompetence do not dissuade Republican voters.
For years now I’ve been getting solicitations from Jared Golden, a congressman from Maine.
I like Maine. I have family there, and it used to belong to the state I grew up in, Massachusetts. But I don’t live in Maine, he’s not my congressman, and I don’t have a lot of money.
I also got solicitations from Warnock, whom I also like. But they were still coming in after the polls closed in Georgia last night, and there are probably more in my inbox this morning.
Enough, guys.
Tethys @ #7 — You paint Georgia with too broad a brush. Georgia is home to a diverse population, and in any case there’s nothing wrong with being “dirt poor” or even ignorant (we are all ignorant).
My mom grew up in the cotton and peanut country of southwest Georgia. Her mom and dad were “rent farmers” or “sharecroppers” who were barely literate. But, they pushed for her and her siblings to get an education. They also encouraged their Black neighbor’s children to get an education. One of them, as a young adult in college, even attended by grandfather’s funeral out of respect for his help.
So not everyone in Georgia…or Texas…fits your hostile description. However, a relatively small clique in Georgia has been able to dominate politics, economics and culture there for some time, just as small cliques have dominated in other places. These cliques actively try to keep other people ignorant and poor and disenfranchised so they can dominate and exploit them. They also encourage the divisiveness of racism and sexism to keep diverse working people from recognizing their common cause.
And as if to prove it, I read yesterday that this run off is because of an election law passed in the 60s (I think) that was pushed through by a White, racist politician. He had narrowly lost an election because Blacks voted for another politician who was viewed as less racist. The idea was that Blacks would have a harder time voting in a run off, and it was probably true because of work and family needs.
Obviously things have changed, in part because of mail in voting and other reforms that make it easier for more working people to vote. And of course, the demographics have changed. Atlanta is one of the biggest cities in the US with people from all over the world moving there to work.
Yeah. When you leave the cities and suburbs you venture into a Magaverse hellscape. And not just in the South, either. Check out California’s Central Valley or any state in the Midwest.
It would be nice if we had something to vote FOR rather than just something to vote against.
Dude, if you didn’t look at Warnock’s record and find anything to “vote FOR,” that kinda makes you part of the problem. Did you ever read up on Warnock, or ANY of the other Democrats running this year? Or did you just lazily assume that none of them had anything good to offer, and never bothered to test your lazy assumption?
Akira MacKenzie@3,
A sentiment Hitler would have found congenial.
Bernie Sanders, not so much.
For the life of me I cannot fathom why anyone would attempt to use the voting results from this (or any) Georgia election to draw any conclusions without recognizing the significant level of GOP election rigging.
I’d like to see an attempt to systematically determine what the outcome would have been if voter suppression did not occur.
Until then, I would withhold sweeping pronouncements.
It’s the fundraising emails from organizations that ostensibly have nothing to do with Warnock that irritate me. You have to go to their actblue page and check the fine print to see where the money is going. Sometimes it’s a 50/50 split between the candidate I want and someone I’ve never heard of, or 100% to a PAC that you just have to trust to spend a little for Warnock.
According to MSNBC there has been a huge demographic shift in the greater Atlanta region that was essential in helping Warnock. As this trend continues Georgia can flip from red to blue.
The idiot party has speeded up the process by letting their elderly base die like flies during the pandemic.
Soon, crooks like Kemp will no longer be helped by gerrymandering and voter suppression.
@7. Tethys : “Georgia is the homeland of dirt poor ignorance, and the biggest piece of white trash in congress. It’s the epitome of the dirty south.”
I thought that would be Mississippi according to Phil Ochs at least? Sadly I gather there’s a few likely contenders for that dubious epitome of status yeah?
5) rich47 sez:
Does it make you feel any better to know you would not vote for any of them in a primary? It’s one thing to vote for your favored party’s chosen candidate, but quite another to vote for such troglodytes in the primary as the best you think your party has to offer (unless they run unopposed in the primary, I guess). Republicans had five other choices in the primary, and while they were all dismal, they chose the most incompetent of the lot.
Living in Floriduh I used to take pride in not being Georgia, Alabama or…Texas (shudder). But now Georgia seems to be moving in the opposite direction of my reddened state. Georgia could improve its image by effacing that Klan resurgence monument Stone Mountain and making it into a tribute to civil rights, kudzu, or REM/B52s. Yeah how did those two iconic bands rise from the Sherman ash heap like a progressive college music phoenix.
North Georgia has some nice campgrounds and hiking trails and a disturbingly racist history. Oprah did an infamous episode there (triggers for extremely offensive racist imagery, actions, and language):
Georgia seems to be changing. Probably unrelated but two of my favorite shows that just ended at the same time were shot in Georgia: The Walking Dead and Atlanta. RIP to both.
Sadly Herschel Walker too was a product of Georgia. I’ll give him credit for his outstanding college play, but he went on to play for Trump’s Generals and luckily that didn’t bite us in the ass this time around.
Georgia…at least you’re not Florida…and you kinda have mountain thingies, pecans, peaches, and other stuff. Do something about Stone Mountain please.
As for Alabama my sister lives around Huntsville and it violated my expectations. Nice area. Space Center is cool if you don’t think too much about von Braun’s origin story. I enjoyed it. They also have that contentious Iron Bowl that defines the state and family rifts. On the way home I have driven toward Chattanooga and taken I-75 south through Atlanta, a parking lot in the late afternoon.
Also Helen, GA. Weird German town theme. Seems interesting. Atlanta did an episode about it. Quirky.
In other and more accurate words, somewhere up to 48.6% of voters voted against any Democrat, while somewhere up to 51.4% of voters voted against this specific Republican. Isn’t that par for the course these days both in the US and abroad? It’s going to be interesting in the next UK election — whether that’s 2024 or happens earlier — to watch people turn out for Labour because it is the usual “other” party and then realize that, whoops, Keir Starmer agrees with most of Johnson’s policies and believes that Labour can make them work where the Tories failed because Labour is smarter. (See also: the Obama administration when they took over control of the Iraq war, the drone warfare program, the DHS and ICE, and Bush’s tax cuts.)
“It would be nice if we had something to vote FOR rather than just something to vote against.”
Warnock was someone to vote for, you dolt.
#13
Quite so. There are stupid ignorant arrogant people commenting here who are little better than the imbeciles who voted for Warner. Most of the people voting for Warnock were voting for him because he’s already an excellent Senator and human being, not merely because he’s not Warner.
“Warner” -> “Walker” (the guy with CTE who lives in a mansion in Texas and was never actually eligible to run for GA Senator but the GOP doesn’t give a fig about obeying rules or laws)
‘The Dirty South’ is not a hostile description of the local culture (openly, deeply racist) of the former slave states. I learned it from some good ol’ boys from Raleigh, NC, and a band called Southern Culture on the Skids.
I’ve spent enough time there to have an accent, though Florida gets the most racist award for being the place where a random man casually told me that people like me used to get fed to the alligators. I then learned what ‘passing’ was at age 34, a term I had never heard growing up in Minnesota. I’m as pale as the typical vampire, so the Florida friends were pretty amused that he thought I was passing, and I shouldn’t mind his making a casual death threat because clearly I was not black. I was more horrified by that than the interaction itself.
Dirty South is a perfect descriptor.
https://vmfa.museum/connect/dirty-south-meaning-influence/
As for “Dirty South” I watched a few episodes of :
And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8EVW4BJhzY
I don’t know if so-called booty bass factors in, but I was there for the rise of 2 Live Crew which I cringe about retrospectively. The electrobass music form was so much more and multicultural (blending latino, black, and krautrock).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_hip_hop
“The single “Throw The D” by the group 2 Live Crew in January 1986 was the first Miami bass song. Fresh Kid Ice (Christopher Wong Won) said that the song came about when he noticed a new popular dance in Miami, when Herman Kelly and Life’s song “Dance to the drummer’s beat” played.[17] 2 Live Crew released their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be in 1989.[18]”
Yeah there’s more to it than reducing Miami bass to 2 Live. That I know who MC Shy D was gives me some authority on this one. He came from New York but spent time in the ATL. 2 Live was from Cali, where LL Cool J was going back to. I don’t think so.
This documentary on the Miami bass scene will give some perspective on one component of the later so-called “dirty south”:
That it’s called that as a music form actually pisses me off as much as the descent into gangsta amongst former breakbeat artists resident in LA. You know who you are World Class Wreckin’ Cru and Ice-T. Ughh! Oh well.
Atlanta has a vibrant music scene, with multiple genres of music represented. My tastes run more to the rockabilly, blues, and picking side.
This video by The Civil Wars looks like somewhere in Georgia, complete with the humidity haze, screaming cicadas, and kudzu.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LYQwVZIr6iE
Southern Culture on the Skids is from Atlanta, and they’re as Southern as boiled peanuts.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N8WGKGkVGw8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LYQwVZIr6iE
@22. The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs)
Really? What makes you think this? Walker wa s a terrible candidate but to say that everyone bvote dthat way and not based on other even sillyreasons like voting for Walker because he wa stheir favourite player or voting for Warnock because he was their preacher in church, etc .. Why not voted for any specific Repug and against any and every Democrat? You seem awfully certain in making this unsupported assertion here Vicar. Why?
No? Apart from “abroad” being an awfully, um, broad term there’s the slight matter of Repugs & Demomcrtic parties being local US ones. I guess you mean in a general sense of progressive vs regressive parties but even there – many nations like mine have a different multipel party system where you vote preferences in order eg I voted Greens, minor parties independents, ALP, other parties, LNP and extreme reichwing One nation party last.
Well, I guess that’s an improvement on your usual focus on irrelevant old history & somehow blaming the USA’s Democratic party for whatever so congrats & keep going but still, erm, relevance here? yeah, Starmer is more centrist than progressive, yes, still better than reich wing .. and so?
FWIW I – or at least one of my brothers – knows of someone who voted in a recent Aussie election for a candidate based merely on her appearance. Yes, seriously. So yeah. Anecdata iknow butstill.
I don’t get why voting against something you don’t like or want is a problem. I thought voting against the other side if you don’t want them to gain power is one of the privileges of democracy.
So a perfectly legitimate choice could actually be do you want [them] in power – yes or no?
Having a two-party system reduces your choices which I find odd in the nation most hell-bent on freedom of choice (some things obviously excluded if the republicans get enough power) so isn’t the flaw actually in the two-party system which just makes it more likely that people will vote in such a way?
It’s not hard to find Warnock’s official policy platform. Here is a sample of his public positions:
Ending mass incarceration
Independent investigations of all police shootings
Climate change prevention
Renewable energy promotion
Federal debt relief for poor farmers
Post-disaster reforestation fund
Switching school buses to zero-emission vehicles
Funding HCBUs
Funding extra educational support for children with disabilities
Insulin price capping to prevent Shkrelian gouging
Universal health care
LGBTQ equality with strong legislative protection
Restoring open abortion availability post-Roe
Safe, affordable contraception
Ending voter suppression
Hate crime legislation to protect immigrants and minorities.
Now, there’s plenty of his policies that I think are not great (I don’t see why specifically cotton growers alone need special funding for COVID losses). And many of his policy ideals are lacking in specifics (yes, it’s his campaign web page, but still). And also, there’s no guarantee that he will pursue all these goals energetically and effectively; we’ll have to wait on that call until he’s been a couple of years in office. And I’m going to give anyone who said “I couldn’t vote for him, just against Walker” the benefit of the doubt and assume they were expressing dissatisfaction with the broad centrist strategy of today’s Democrat party-room operatives rather than specific dissatisfaction with Warnock. But I would suggest that anyone who looks at that list and still thinks there’s no reason to vote for him either does not have progressive values or is more interested in noisy contrarianism than in effective progressive political action.
@#30, StevoR:
The comments from actual Georgian voters that I’ve read elsewhere? As with Trump, I saw a lot of “this candidate sucks but we can’t let the Democrats win this election so I’m voting for him” from Republicans and on the Democratic side (and from Independents) I saw something like 4 times as much “we have to keep this idiot out” as “I actually like out candidate”.
Which is why, if you actually had the ability to read, you would have noted that I actually wrote “somewhere up to X%” in both cases, dimwit.
But the phenomenon of “voting for a candidate you don’t like, or at least don’t care about either way, because you hate the opposition” is extremely common, even in systems which theoretically don’t have 2 major parties. And then I gave the example of the UK, where — barring some kind of absolutely unforeseeable upheaval — the Tories are going to lose, hard, to Labour, through precisely that dynamic, and then the Tories are quite possibly going to make an easy comeback because the public’s perception that Labour, since the ouster of Corbyn, represents an actual alternative to the Tories is false.
🙄 Yeah, we all know that nothing in politics has any history, and even if it did, obviously none of it could possibly stretch back to (checks notes) 30 years ago (the oldest era I usually reference). Obviously anything that happened in the 1990s is old and can’t possibly be influencing anything by now. That’s why we should stick to relevant things like the standard Democratic partisan line that Reagan is responsible for everything that’s wrong… you know, from 40 years ago.
He spent most of Johnson’s time as PM saying that he agreed with Johnson’s decisions. Since then he’s issued some really revolting announcements, like saying that the UK should be expelling even more immigrants. If your definition of “reich wing” is so limited that it only applies to people who are in parties you don’t like, and has no reference to actual policy, then you’re a dunce.
Well, okay, you’ve given ample reason to believe you’re a dunce anyway. So let me amend that to: even more of a dunce.
Vicar:
No, he did not.
@ The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) :
So .. youare basing your judgement which you stated was “more accurate”” (#22) on .. social media comment sections? People who talk to reporters? Youthink that’s a fair &r epresentative sample? You know all too many people aren’t politically aware and engaged like mostof us are right? You stress that your view is suppsoedly more correct than others but its based on your subjective impressions of comment sites you read? You seem to be putting an awful lot of weight on your personal opinion about some other people’s expressed opinions and then claiming that as accurate objective truth about allthepeople who voted. Most of whoem – I suspect – probly didn’t even discuss it on social media or talk to reporters.
In # 22 upthread? Your figures seem to add up to all the voters who voted so .. okay. Basically you take the votes each candidate got – quantifiable evidence but then read motivation of your own into all of it. Which, nah, not convincing & almost certainly wrong in that many of those who voted would have voted for othervarying reasons as I said..
Fair enough but not what I was repolying to or addressing from your #22 Vicar. You stated : ” Isn’t that par for the course these days both in the US and abroad?
I said no question mark and explained why.
History and stuff and context yes, agreed but then you cite it when it suits you here inmy view and ignore that the electoral context and methodology of otherplaces varies very greatly and of course the Democratic and Republican parties ar eUSA ones only.
StevoR,
Indeed. See Ridana @19.
@34 Vicar – Continued :
Italics original.
Wait, so you are saying because a party doesn’t go as far as you – and I would wish – that makes it NOT an actual alternative? I don’t think so.It is fair to call out the centrism and lack of progressivism and to call for the British Labour party to move further leftwards. No issue there. However, to say that because they aren’t as leftwing as we’d like they aren’t an alterrnative at all goes too far and is simply untrue.
This FYI Vicar is what makes you seem like an unrealistic extremist purist who is actively hurting positive changes by making the perfect the enemy of the good. Yeah, the Labour parties – here and in the UK and the Democratic party in the States don’t do everything or even half as much as what we’d personally like and have their flaws. It is frustrating, At times absolutely infuriating. I can relate to that. However, to then say that makes them equally as bad as parties that are extremely reichwing and have people like Trump, Truss and Scummo leading them is obviously absurd.
The topic of the OP here? Which is the election in the USA’s state of Georgia specifically NOT British politics? Like the disturbing reality that as many people voted for Walker as they did despite Walker being, well, Walker?
I mean there’s other things Ilike to talk about too – Pluto and cricket and local native plants but when the topic is, y’know, the election in Georgia USA, probly best not to derail the thread with something totally different and unrelated yeah? Ity’s no huge issue I guess but still..
Huh. You think that’s the “standard Democratic line” here do you. Suddenly really feeling itchy from all this straw around.. where did that come from? Who brought that in again? Who exactly is now blaming Reagun (St Reagun of the Ronnie Star Wars Reaguns?) again here? Who even mentioned Reagun among the Democratic party or their fans here? (Who are? Scans thread above. See’s zero mentions of the 40th POTUS until comment #34.)
Well, that’s an extraordinary claim! You wouldn’t make that without actual evidence would you? Hmm.. Lessee :
https://www.google.com/search?q=starmer+i+agree+with+boris+johnson&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU834AU834&sxsrf=ALiCzsZuzU3eWvSkvQYa3r9FWb19UAtjZw%3A1670502000820&ei=cNaRY7rRMa264-EP-LWzoAQ&oq=Starmer+I+agree+with+Boris+Johnson&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQARgAMgQIIxAnOgoIABBHENYEELADOgcIIxCwAhAnSgQIQRgASgQIRhgAUMEMWJ8mYJ08aAFwAXgAgAGmAYgBxAKSAQMwLjKYAQCgAQHIAQjAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Oh and, er, :
https://www.google.com/search?q=Starmer+UK+should+be+expelling+even+more+immigrants+&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU834AU834&sxsrf=ALiCzsbNsxbEdFmpb3O_cv_K_UtpV1hYhg%3A1670502134059&ei=9taRY92ZA4-L4-EP6t6JqAY&ved=0ahUKEwjd7K-yger7AhWPxTgGHWpvAmUQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=Starmer+UK+should+be+expelling+even+more+immigrants+&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIECCMQJ0oECEEYAUoECEYYAFCSBFjdWWDMXWgCcAB4AIABsAGIAYMEkgEDMC4zmAEAoAEBwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Well, I guess one out of two is, um, half-ish?
Yeah, not a big Starmer fan here either and yet :
Source : https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/11/24/star-n24.html
Somehow I’m not sure this exactly equates to the words you said that he said. Horrid as what Starmer said is I don’t see a call there to expel even more immigrants – presumably even more than the Tories?
Now, I think Starmer is a fairly reichwing leader as far as British Labour goes. Corbyn wa samuch better human beingand potential British PM. I am no fan of Starmer’s at all & he wouldn’t be my first choice of leader just as Biden wasn’t and Albo wasn’t. But if you are going to attack him and his policies, maybe try being truthful and accurate about it since going too far will again further degrade your credibility and make you look unreliable as a source of commentary here?
“Luckily” for me it isn’t and I’m not. Reichwing refers to actual reichwing policies of extreme nationalism, individualism, capitalism and policies similar to those of fascists and bigots not simply parties I dislike. I could go into more detail but then you could’ve linked and shown your sources and definitions too so ..meh.
In this specific regard theDemocratic party is relatively left wing vs the Repugs and Warnock is very definitley leftwing as opposed to Walker. See # 33 chrislawson for evidence and proof here.
Oh Noezzz!!11ty!One!! More of a “dunce” than someone who confidently expected Biden to lose the 2020 election and who thinks the woman who actually got the most votes from the American people in 2016 was a terrible choice for nominee and a person who couldn’t convince his own party he was actually a better candidate who would’ve won more votes instead and who cheered on Trump and is an accelerationist who thinks that Trumpism triumphing over the Democratic party will somehow end up working out just fine and dandy (& never mind the cost paid by others meanwhile!) because it means the current Democratic party will lose (So ..Ha-haaaaa111!) & then .. missing step .. a miracle occurs and socialism / communism / somethigWTF ism magically then wins because things get so bad that .. um,, somehow .. that causes a working positive revolution with unicorn rainbow farts and (bingo!) Utopia? Ohhh-kaaay then.
In countries with the obsolete “first past thw post” system we are doomed to vote for the least bad candidate. Strategic voting is recommended, like they do in Britain in districts where the LibDems (but not labour) might be successful against the sitting tory PM .
#9 Ridana
Well, for sure. After all, I voted for Bernie in the primary, when he was running against Hillary.
My point is more that I can understand why Republicans vote for these “low quality” candidates. As voters, we have little control (1 vote) over who runs for office and, certainly, who wins. I think that as much as we may like our favored candidate, we vote for the party, not the individual. I think that’s acknowledged by those of us who “hold our nose” to vote for people like Walz (Minnesota governor).
Frankly, I’d really like to vote for a third party (socialist, green, etc.), but the stakes are too high. Too high, because it really looks to me that the Republicans, and their ignorant voters, have us on a path to fascism.
I couldn’t have put it better!