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random-thought-depository · 4 years ago

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@multiheaded1793, continuing from my response to this, I wrote up some alternate history scenarios for the 2020 election to illustrate to you how I think this sort of discourse would be happening in multiple very different scenarios. I think there’s only one scenario that centrist liberals wouldn’t interpret as vindication of their beliefs, and that’s a huge Dem win with a leftist like Sanders at the top of the ticket (a resounding democratic leftist victory is the one experience that’s incompatible with their beliefs about politics!).

It would have been more elegant to just tag you about this, but for some reason I can’t.

These aren’t “proper” alternate history scenarios, e.g. the Sanders victory scenario is “worked backward” to give a final result that’s basically just like OTL, cause the “joke” of the scenario is that the result is basically exactly the same but it’s interpreted differently because it’s Sanders at the top of the ticket instead of Biden. I think “realistically” a Sanders victory scenario would be more different. Or maybe not; one possible interpretation of the 2020 election is elections are very deterministic and it basically doesn’t matter who the candidates are, in which case if we could see a Sanders victory world we might indeed be shocked by how similar their election results maps are to ours.

I hope I didn’t make any silly mistakes. It’s hard to remember and keep track of the twists and turns of this election and the complexities of the United States’s kludgey spaghetti-coded election system! This is why I prefer writing science fiction: there’s less of a chance of getting something wrong!

Anyway, I hope you’ll find these entertaining if nothing else. Warning, this is kind of long.

Resounding Biden victory world:

The point of divergence that leads to this world is obscure. Perhaps it happened decades or centuries or even millennia ago. Whatever the differences are, for a long time they remained hidden in the vast but subtle sociological forces that do more to shape history than all the politicians, generals, philosophers, and prophets. It was only on November 3rd 2020 that these differences produced a manifestation on the flashy surface of politics, as a volcanic eruption might alert humanity to vast slow movements happening in the hot darkness deep within the Earth. On November 3rd 2020 the Democrats get the resounding victory and resounding repudiation of Donald Trump that they were hoping for.

The differences become obvious on election night. As in our world, there is a “red mirage” created by in-person voters favoring Republicans while mail voters favored Democrats, and this briefly creates the impression that the Republicans are doing surprisingly well, but with a much more lopsided vote this “red mirage” lifts much more quickly than in our world. Wisconsin and Michigan flip blue relatively early on election night, while swing state after swing state goes into the Biden-lead column: Arizona, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania ... Texas. Not long into election night Texas flips blue for the first time in two generations; when the news goes out on the TV a hundred million liberals cheer and a hundred million conservatives groan as it becomes obvious that the Republican Party is headed not merely toward defeat but toward a historic once-in-a-generation disempowerment and humiliation. Trump reacts predictably, going on TV to make baseless allegations that he is only losing because of massive voter fraud, but against the background of such a monumental defeat it seems more comical and pathetic than anything else. By the time the sun rises over the CONUS Atlantic coast on November 4th the election is basically all over except for the formalities.

In this world Joe Biden wins all the states he won in our world, and he also wins North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. He also wins one of Nebraska’s electoral votes (as in our world), and wins all four of Maine’s electoral votes (in our world he only won three of Maine’s four electoral votes). Trump still wins Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri, but they’re thin squeaker victories, instead of the comfortable margins of victory he enjoyed in those states in our world. The final electoral college count is Biden 389, Trump 149 (in our world it’s Biden 306, Trump 232). In the popular vote the election is a spectacular landslide blow-out, with over 85 million people voting for Biden while only a little over 50 million people voted for Trump (as of the count on 11/25/2020); Biden’s huge popular vote margin of victory doesn’t make any difference legally but it’s a nice solid symbolic repudiation of Trump.

The picture elsewhere is somewhat less spectacularly rosy for Democrats, the big story of this election being more repulsion toward Trump than repulsion toward Republicans in general. Still, the overall picture is very good for Democrats.

Doug Jones loses his seat in Alabama as he did in our world, but in this world Democrats pick up Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Maine (in our world only Arizona and Colorado flipped to the Democrats). This gives the Democrats a net gain of four seats and a 51 seat majority, with a strong possibility of picking up the other Georgia Senate seat in the run-off election in January 2021. It’s a very thin majority, leaving them vulnerable to conservadem defections, but it’s probably about as good as could realistically be expected under the circumstances. In the House of Representatives the Democrats increase their majority to 243 seats (it was 235 seats after the 2018 “blue wave”); it wasn’t needed, but it’s nice to have. Democrat governors are elected in Vermont and New Hampshire (unlike in our world, where Republicans won those races). Perhaps best of all, the Democrats do well in the state legislature races, and that means they will control much of the next round of redistricting; the consequences of that may profoundly shape the political landscape in the future.

The most obvious discourse implication of this result is an apparent vindication of the Biden strategy of inoffensiveness and reaching out to affluent suburban centrist swing voters. The “Bernie can’t win, we need an electable moderate to take down Trump” people are feeling totally vindicated and credibly claiming credit for this huge victory and drawing lessons for the future that basically amount to “the strategy we advocated was clearly the correct one and we should keep doing it”; they think that if it had been Sanders at the top of the ticket the Democratic victory would have been much narrower or not happened at all. The 2020 election result map also suggests a new geography for the Democratic Party. While the blue wall held this time, in the context of this resounding Democrat victory it looks kind of Trumpy: Trump still won Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa (barely), the Democrat candidate lost the Senate race in Iowa, and Biden’s margins of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania aren’t overwhelming. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has made huge inroads into the south on the strength of southern blacks, Latino/as, and highly educated affluent suburban white swing voters. Political analysts observe that Biden could have lost the Blue Wall and Texas and still narrowly won (with 304 electoral votes). The “recipe” for the huge Biden win was to get lots of non-white votes while peeling off suburban moderates. This strategy is likely to get more effective in the future as the non-white population grows and the country becomes increasingly educated. Put together, this suggests that the Democrat faction in the ascendance will the the moderate “identity politics” faction that wants the Democratic Party to be an economically centrist and institutionally moderate-reformist minority advocate party (think: the sort of people who unironically see “more black lesbian CEOs” as a significant metric of social improvement). On the uglier fringes, this shades into the idea that the Democratic Party doesn’t need those Trumpy culturally conservative poor white people and should just leave them to vote for Republican politicians and rot.

On the left flank, response is divided. Some think that Trump was so bad a potted plant with a smiley face could have won a huge victory against him so the actually existing huge Democratic victory means very little; they think a more leftist party with somebody like Sanders at the top of the ticket would have done even better (a favorite argument of theirs is to paint the mere 51 seat Democrat Senate majority as pathetic). Others think the moderates are probably right about their strategy being the most effective one; it’s hard to argue with spectacular tangible success.

On the Republican side of the aisle, Trump and his hard-core supporters are digging in their heels and claiming with no evidence that the Democrats only won because they cheated. In the other parts of the Republican party, there’s a lot of soul-searching and distancing themselves from Trump and rats fleeing the sinking ship. A decisive repudiation of Trump-style politics within the Republican Party seems likely.

The version of me that exists in this world really enjoyed election night. He bought a nice dinner for himself to celebrate and sat back and enjoyed watching the Republicans get what was coming to them. He has a fond memory of joyously yelling “HE’S BODIED! HE’S FIRED!” as Texas flipped blue. He was in a good mood for days after the election. He feels kind of conflicted about the wider implications of this election though. It sure will be nice to have Trump gone, and the decisive repudiation of Trumpism sure is nice, but... Joe Biden will have most of what he needs to be the next F.D.R., but will he want to be that? Probably not. He still wistfully thinks it would have been better if Sanders or Warren was up there: they might really do something with a once-in-a-century opportunity like this! He expects Biden and his centrist faction to more-or-less squander it. And he’s very much aware of what factions within the Democratic Party will reap a huge PR win from this victory, and he doesn’t enjoy thinking about it. He’s not looking forward to watching Kamala Harris’s inauguration speech in 2024. Still, this will be an opportunity for the left to build. Maybe if A.O.C. can primary Harris in 2024... And if it was Sanders or Warren at the top of the ticket they might have lost, so maybe this is the best that could realistically be hoped for. He’s decided that for now he’s just going to enjoy the beautiful knowledge that Donald Trump’s Presidency will end on January 20th 2021; the future can be worried about when it comes.

Narrow Sanders victory world:

The primaries:

Perhaps this world too was subtly different from ours long before the differences effected the flashy surface of politics, but the obvious point of divergence between this world and ours is Joe Biden unknowingly accidentally eating some contaminated food on February 23rd 2020 (the day after the Nevada caucuses). On the evening of February 23rd he becomes violently ill and is taken to a hospital, where he is diagnosed with a very serious case of food poisoning. His symptoms are severe and there is a tense period when his doctors are not sure he’ll survive. There’s a miscommunication somewhere along the line, and on the night of February 23rd a member of Biden’s staff tells a reporter he’s ready to leak a huge scoop: Joe Biden is dying. By the morning of February 24th the story has hit the presses.

Reports of Joe Biden’s imminent demise prove greatly exaggerated. Though Biden’s illness is severe, it passes quickly: by late morning on February 25th Biden has more-or-less recovered and is out of the hospital and being driven to an airplane that will take him to South Carolina, where he will hit the campaign trail, trying for that win he needs to save his floundering campaign. Still, the incident raises concerns about his health and age at the worst possible time. On February 29th Joe Biden gets the big win he needs in the South Carolina primary, but it’s not quite as big as in our world; the delegate count from South Carolina is this world is Biden 37, Sanders 17 (in our world it was Biden 39, Sanders 15). It is a portent of things to come. With the food poisoning incident raising concerns about Biden’s age and health, different political calculations are made, and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar don’t sacrifice their Presidency ambitions to give Biden a clear shot at the nomination.

With Buttigieg and Klobuchar still in the race super-Tuesday is a bit of a muddle, instead of the clear Biden victory it was in our world. Sanders wins the west, manages a narrow plurality win in Texas, and manages a strong second or third place in many other states. The super-Tuesday map is rich with southern states where Biden’s conservative reputation and connections with the black community serve him well, and Biden does well. If Democratic primaries were winner-take-all Biden would have managed the sort of resounding victory he had in our world, but they are proportional, so Buttigieg and Klobuchar cut deep into his delegate share and he’s unable to top Sanders the way he did in our world. Amy Klobuchar gets a plurality win in her home state of Minnesota, and Klobuchar and Buttigieg do well in the northeastern states, allowing Sanders to claim plurality wins in all of them. After throwing an obscene mountain of money at the primaries, Michael Bloomberg performs disappointingly. Elizabeth Warren also performs disappointingly. Political analysts in this world see the big winners of super-Tuesday as Sanders and Biden. Biden has gone from floundering to being the clear front-runner among the moderates. Sanders doesn’t really perform all that much better than in our world, but with the moderate vote split he comes out of super-Tuesday the biggest winner, with a solid delegate lead and a good enough performance to look like a strong candidate.

A few days after super-Tuesday Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren drop out of the race and Elizabeth Warren endorses Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the biggest winner from this, as the left flank of the Democratic Party now fully consolidates around him while the moderates remain divided.

The next round of primaries is March 10th. It’s again a muddle, which ultimately favors Sanders. Joe Biden wins big in Mississippi, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg do fairly well, and Sanders wins in Washington and manages a solid second or third place in most other places, which given the proportional nature of Democratic primaries means he continues to build a plurality delegate lead.

The Democrat machine politicians can see where this is going and don’t like it. They well remember what happened to their Republican counterparts in 2016, when a divided field helped their insufficiently house-trained disruptive outsider candidate win the nomination and ultimately the Presidency. They have no intention of letting the same story play out on the opposite side of the aisle in 2020. Having proved himself with his good performance on super-Tuesday, Joe Biden has re-established himself as the Democrat establishment’s favored candidate, and pressure is brought on Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to drop out. In mid-March Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suspend their campaigns and endorse Joe Biden.

Sanders and Biden head into their first one-on-one round on March 17. Biden wins big in Florida, while Sanders gets a modest majority of the vote in Illinois and consolidates his dominance of the west by winning in Arizona.

Meanwhile, COVID19 has been spreading as in our world. By mid-March cities all over the country are under shelter-in-place orders and the Democrats are scrambling to try to figure out how to manage a still very competitive primary election in the middle of a once-in-a-century plague year. Then, in late May, the next punch comes; George Floyd dies as he did in our world, and as in our world his death catalyzes a huge eruption of protest and civil unrest.

The whole thing feels queasily mystical. It is as if someone Upstairs thought the Donald Trump Presidency wasn’t as exciting as they’d hoped it would be and tweaked the parameters of the simulation to make 2020 an Interesting Times speed run. Donald Trump seems to only become more vicious and delusional as he presides over a country increasingly riven with civil unrest and fully under the power of the coronavirus. The streets are eerily quiet, like tombs, when they are not increasingly filled with protest and rage and violence. Bernie Sanders is claiming dominion over the Democratic Party and seems poised to do for the left what Donald Trump did for the right. Opinions are divided about exactly how that last thing feels queasily mystical. Is it the light rising to challenge the growing darkness? Or is the horseman of socialism riding with the horseman of plague and the horseman of civil strife? Whatever value judgments one makes about what’s happening, it seems that the old order is being pummeled from many directions simultaneously and is being driven to its knees. Or perhaps it is dying in the way an AIDS patient might die; killed by half a dozen secondary infections that are all fundamentally consequences of the same disease.

With Klobuchar and Buttigieg out of the race Biden surges. In the later one-on-one primaries against Sanders, Biden usually either wins or comes in a strong second. Biden is particularly strong in the south; he wins big in almost every southern state. Many are surprised by the strength of Biden, who many had previously dismissed as an uncharismatic doddering old man who seemed to struggle to string together coherent sentences. However, unlike in our world, in this world Sanders looks like a winner, so many fence-sitters who voted for Biden in our world vote for Sanders in this world, so Biden is unable to dominate the later primaries the way he did in our world.

The final Democratic primary debate in April looks much like it did in our world: two old men in a mostly empty room; an elbow-bump instead of a handshake because they don’t want to risk coronavirus infection by getting close to each other. It’s a test of how well the notoriously gaffe-prone Biden will do in a one-on-one debate, and he passes that test fairly well, allaying fears that he may have some sort of age-related cognitive decline. Biden’s promise to choose a woman as his Vice President is a clever bit of political maneuvering; Sanders is clearly unprepared for it and struggles to respond gracefully. The only big difference is the mostly unstated background knowledge of who is winning and who is losing. In this world Sanders comes into the April debate fresh from an unspectacular but fairly solid win in the Wisconsin primary.

With neither candidate able to dominate the race the Democratic primary remains competitive into June in this world. Biden gains on Sanders, but is unable to overtake him. Political pundits speculate that Sanders has an unfair advantage: he has an ally in the coronavirus: Biden’s vulnerable older supporters stay home in fear of the coronavirus, while Sanders’s younger and less vulnerable supporters go to the polls without fear.

In early June, Joe Biden and Democrat machine politicians face a choice. Biden can stay in the race to the bitter end. Maybe he can overtake Sanders, reach the magic 1,991 delegates, and go into the Democratic convention the unquestionably fair-and-square winner with a clear majority. Or if he can’t do that, he can still try to win on the conventional floor. Klobuchar’s and Buttigieg’s state-level delegates will be proportionately redistributed between him and Sanders, but their district delegates will be in free play and, with the blessings of Klobuchar and Buttigieg, will almost certainly back Biden. Biden can likewise probably expect the superdelegates to side with him. If it comes to convention floor politics Biden will probably easily crush Sanders. It will all be perfectly legally correct. It can even be credibly argued to be the will of the people; everyone knows Sanders is only winning because the moderate vote was split. But does the Democrat establishment dare alienate Sanders’s supporters this way, when they are going into one of the greatest political fights of the twenty-first century against Donald Trump? A long, bruising primary that drags into July may harm the party in the general election. And they know that inside Sanders’s clothing there is more than a man: there is the human mascot and spear-tip of a movement. Biden gaining the nomination through convention floor political maneuvers may be perfectly legally correct, but it takes no great political genius to see Sanders’s supporters will not see it that way; they will see it as their hero being undemocratically cheated out of his victory by a dirty trick. There is a great fear that if this course of action is taken Joe Biden’s 2020 nomination will go down in history as the twenty-first century equivalent of Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 nomination. And there’s also a real fear that a Sanders defeat by convention floor political maneuvers might trigger an eruption of violence as Sanders’s fanatical supporters respond by violently rioting in the streets. The fact that Sanders is so popular with the young, relevantly with fighting age men, starts to assume an ominous dimension in these speculations.

The last competitive primary happens on June 9th. Biden wins big in Georgia, while Sanders gets a surprisingly big win in West Virginia. The day after that, Joe Biden and top-level Democrat machine politicians make a decision. It is perhaps the most important decision of Joe Biden’s life. They will make a sacrifice for party unity in the face of Donald Trump. On June 11th 2020, Joe Biden goes on TV, announces that he is suspending his campaign, endorses Bernie Sanders, and urges party unity in the face of Trump. Immediately afterward, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg also endorse Bernie Sanders.

The general election:

In August, it is announced that Elizabeth Warren has been chosen to be Sanders’s Vice President if he wins. There is speculation that there was a deal made to get her to drop out and endorse Sanders in March and this was the reward she was promised, though she is a logical choice in important ways. She has name recognition, has similar politics to Sanders while being somewhat younger than him (unusually important in this election because Sanders is so old and is an “outsider” candidate; he will need somebody who can pick up the torch from him if he dies in office, or in 2024 when he’ll be in his 80s), has a cooler and more analytical intelligence that compliments Sanders’s charisma, and may be attractive to some voters who are less enthusiastic about Sanders.

On August 17-20 the Democratic National Convention formally nominates Bernie Sanders as the Democratic Presidential candidate for 2020.

The mood among liberals going into the general election is tenser and less confident than in our world. Sanders has a lead over Trump in most polls, but the polls don’t look as good for the Democrats as they did in our world. And Sanders, a man who openly calls himself a socialist, a man who said something nice about something Fidel Castro did and dug in his heels when called in it, is a candidate who naturally inspires electability worries. Many liberals are convinced the Democratic Party has collectively made a terrible mistake, and hope they are wrong.

The first Sanders-Trump debate is on September 29th, and it’s the same kind of spectacle the first Biden-Trump debate was in our world. The highlight (or perhaps lowlight) is Trump making a “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” statement which many interpret as a call to stand ready to act as brownshirts on his behalf. Some moderates have a vague idea that a Biden-Trump debate might have been somehow more dignified and Presidential, some leftists chuckle about how if it was Biden up there he’d probably have soiled his pants in the middle of the debate or something, the general sentiment among everyone to the left of Mitt Romney is simply that Trump lived down to their worst expectations.

The Vice Presidential debate between Mike Pence and Elizabeth Warren on October 7th is a note of normality: they actually sound like normal politicians instead of like two old men having a Thanksgiving table argument about politics while the rest of the family wishes they’d quiet down. There’s a 2020 touch when a fly rests on Mike Pence’s head for a few minutes.

In the final Sanders-Trump debate they put in a mute button to stop Trump from interrupting so much, and it’s actually a huge favor to Trump, disciplining him into actually being an actually not bad debater.

Election night and after:

The mood among liberals going into election night is tenser and less optimistic than in our world. There’s no confident expectation of a big blue wave and a resounding repudiation of Trumpism, and there’s a lot of fear that Sanders is simply unelectable and he will drag down the down-ballot with him.

Election night seems to confirm the worst. Swing state after swing state goes into the Trump-lead column, and aside from a couple of wins in the west the Senate race picture looks bleak for the Democrats. It looks like Trump will win Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. Sanders’s margins of victory in crucial swing states are mostly tighter, so it takes longer for the “red mirage” to lift. One of the few bright spots for the Democrats is Arizona, which is a sour note for Donald Trump; at this point he’s mostly confident of victory, but losing Arizona is a humiliation, and Donald Trump hates being humiliated. Late in election night, Donald Trump goes on TV and makes a confident victory speech. He has some worries about the red mirage though, so in typical Trump fashion he follows his confident declaration of victory by claiming that the Democrats are committing voter fraud on a massive scale and trying to steal the election, and he says that the vote counts should stop. A defiant Sanders goes on TV and reassures his supporters that there are many voters yet to be counted, and then goes on the attack, saying Trump is blatantly trying to steal the election. He also says something that some interpret as a call for his supporters to riot if his victory is stolen from him, giving the left its own version of Trump’s “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” scandal.

There’s a lot of tension in a lot of mixed-generation liberal households on election night, as older, more cautious and moderate liberals quietly or not so quietly blame the youngsters for the disaster they believe is unfolding in front of them. “This wouldn’t have happened with Biden or Mayor Pete or Klobuchar,” they think, “How did you expect middle America to react to a guy who calls himself a socialist and defends Fidel Castro? We told you this would happen!” The election picture most liberals go to bed with that night is bleak.

In the last dark pre-dawn hours of November 4th the red mirage finally begins to lift. Wisconsin flips to Sanders-lead. By late morning on November 4th Michigan has also flips to Sanders-lead. Millions of older liberals who went to bed blaming the Berniebros for four more years of Donald Trump check the news and breathe a sigh of surprised relief: it’s not much but maybe Bernie did have what it takes after all; he managed something he needed to do, something Hillary Clinton failed to do: he held the blue wall! All eyes now turn to Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania actually flips somewhat earlier than in our world, to the absolute jubilant delight of young liberal “Berniebros,” the cautious relief of their liberal elders, and the disappointment or outrage or terror of a hundred million conservatives. Not long afterward, a surprise: Georgia flips to Sanders-lead too. It’s a real squeaker, even tighter than Biden’s Georgia win in our world, and Sanders would have won without it, but it’s a pleasant surprise for liberals.

With the election basically all over but the formalities Sanders makes his formal victory speech, with raucous cheers from enthusiastic supporters. In contrast to the almost therapeutic victory speech Biden gave in our world, Sanders’s victory speech is darker, angrier. The speech has its hopeful and conciliatory notes, but the general thrust of its message is that Sanders intends to fight for the ordinary American and his fight has just begun.

Sanders’s victory is greeted with an outpouring of joy and celebration by his often young supporters. Most liberals are happy just to get rid of Trump. Many moderate liberals aren’t really looking forward to what they see as another four years of an obnoxious angry extremist in the White House, but at least Sanders isn’t evil. On the right the mood ranges from grumpy disappointment to ... dark. There’s a significant number of people who are under the sincere impression that Sanders is basically Lenin and the relationship between him and Antifa is similar to the relationship between Hitler and the Blackshirts.

So far the much-feared Trumpist brownshirts seem to be a paper tiger; there have been some rowdy protests but no serious violence. Lots of people are very fervently hoping things stay that way.

Somewhere there’s an immigrant from China who’s old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution and is very, very frightened. She doesn’t follow politics much but she’s heard that Bernie Sanders is a communist and she’s got just the right mix of garbled information about him filtered through her Fox News watching neighbors to be very alarmed. It’s starting here too! It’s all starting again! She’s trying to give her family a crash-course in how to survive in a communist dictatorship, but they’ve never known anything but freedom and don’t seem to be taking her very seriously, which is frustrating and heartbreaking to her; “they don’t realize these things will soon be matters of life and death!”

Comparing the election results in our world and in this world, most people would be struck by how similar they look, how little difference the top of the ticket made.

Compared to Biden, Sanders did better in the west but worse in the south. He did worse with affluent moderates and center-rightists and better with liberals and poor people. He did worse with blacks but better with Latino/as. He actually has a bigger popular vote win than Biden, mostly because he creates greater enthusiasm in liberal areas such as California, but his margins of victory in swing states are mostly tighter. Sanders didn’t poll as well as Biden in the lead-up to the election, but he also did not underperform expectations in the same way; Sanders supporters tend to be the sort of people who don’t answer polls much. Compared to Biden, Sanders’s success relied less on peeling off swing voters and more on bringing in politically disengaged people; the sort of people who don’t answer polls much, don’t trust or like the talking heads on TV, usually don’t vote, and are usually poorer and less formally educated than the conventional electorate. In short, the “dark horse” Sanders voter looks a lot like the “dark horse” Trump voter.

In short, compared to Biden, Sanders has a rather Trumpy profile, and his winning strategy looks kind of like a sort of left-wing mirror of Trump’s 2016 winning strategy: super-charge the base, draw in some politically disengaged people, rely on partisan tribalism to fill in the gaps, with this build the sort of narrow winning coalition that can just manage to defy conventional political wisdom and propel an “extreme, outsider” normally “unelectable” candidate into office.

Sanders won the same states Biden won in our world. His margins of victory are bigger in Arizona and Pennsylvania but smaller in Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. Sanders didn’t win that one electoral college vote in Nebraska, which in this world went solidly to Trump, so his electoral college total is slightly smaller than Biden’s.

In the Senate, the picture is broadly similar to our world, though with some differences. Warren and Sanders were both Senators from states with Republican governors who would have the responsibility of appointing their replacements if Sanders became President. The governor of Vermont agrees to appoint a Democrat-aligned independent to replace Sanders if he wins (much as he did in our world), but the governor of Massachusetts intends to appoint a Republican to replace Warren. However, the Democrats did get one stroke of luck in this world that they didn’t get in ours: the Democrat Senate candidate won in Iowa; this saves Warren from going down in history as having cost the Democrats a Senate majority by accepting the Vice Presidency post. Other than this the Senate picture looks basically just like in our world. This puts the Democrats in a somewhat better position than in our world, as there will be a special election for Warren’s Senate seat in 2021 that is likely to elect a Democrat, but the Senate majority is going to come down to two run-off races in Georgia, just like in our world. The House races went a little worse for the Democrats than in our world: as of 11/25/2020 the Cook Political Report calls the House as 220 Democrats, 213 Republicans, and 2 uncalled races (in our world it’s 222 Democrats, 210 Republicans, and 3 uncalled races). Likewise, the governor’s races went the same way they went in our world, except that the Republican also won the governor’s race in North Carolina (in our world, the Democrat won that race). And the state legislature races are the same depressing picture as in our world, so Republicans will control much of the next round of redistricting.

The post-election discourse:

Of course, people in this world cannot compare their election results with ours and see how similar they are. They can only speculate about what our world might look like, just as I can only speculate about what their world might look like. And speculate they do.

Many centrist, moderate, and “pragmatist” Democrats think they know exactly who’s to blame for the Democrat’s disappointing performance: Sanders, and by extension the primary voters who put him at the top of the ticket. How could a President be as bad as Trump was, get 250,000 U.S. citizens killed through incompetence, and then come so close to winning? How could so many people vote for such a person and for the politicians who did nothing to stop him and aided him? Well, maybe if the opposition party did something incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid, like putting at the top of the ticket a guy who openly calls himself a socialist and who defends Fidel Castro... They are convinced that the election results look the way they do because Sanders turned off huge numbers of persuadable voters. They think the Berniebros took the perfect storm of conditions for a once-in-a-century huge Democrat victory that was 2020 and used it to get an ordinarily unelectable extremist into the White House, at an enormous opportunity cost to the rest of the party (and a little less luck and they’d have blown their own goal too and gotten everyone four more years of Trump!). They are convinced that if it were Biden or Klobuchar or Buttigieg at the top of the ticket the party would not be in this mess. Many of them are sure that the Democratic Party would have surged magnificently to crushing dominance of the Presidency and both branches of Congress, if only the Berniebros hadn’t insisted on burdening the party with a toxic albatross.

The predictable tweets and thinkpieces blaming the disappointing election results on Sanders have been written. The disappointing results in the south are blamed on Sanders’s inability to reach out to black people and persuadable white moderates. Somebody looks at exit polls, notices Trump seems to have improved his performance with everyone except white men (a pattern that exists in our world too), and multiple high-profile articles and blog posts are written blaming this on Sanders’s “class reductionism” and supposed insensitivity to the problems of everyone who isn’t a working class white man. The election map represents the Democratic Party turning away from its vibrant diverse future and doubling down on its decaying past as the party of “white working class” Midwesterners. The fact that non-white people still overwhelmingly voted Democrat and Sanders has many female and minority supporters is, of course, quietly soft-peddled in such analysis. The disappointing election results are blamed on the Democratic Party’s embrace of socialism, of Medicare For All, of “defund the police,” of BLM. Criticism that paints Sanders as “class reductionist” and insufficiently sensitive to the needs of women and minorities coexists happily with criticism that castigates the Democratic Party for embracing anything that makes affluent culturally conservative suburban white people uncomfortable.

Many leftists are, of course, convinced that the moderates have it all backwards and the Democrats would have gone down in epic humiliating defeat under Klobuchar or Buttigieg or, God, can you imagine; Biden. The closeness of the election just shows how badly the Democrats needed a leader like Sanders who could inspire people and had something real to offer; without him the Republicans would have wiped the floor with them; he saved the party from total defeat and ingratitude and backstabbing is his predictable reward, because liberals would rather lose to fascists than win with leftists. It just shows electoral politics is a waste of time anyway, watch 2024 when Warren gets primaried by Mayo Pete who then loses to Tom Cotton.

The version of me that exists in this world had a tense election night, breathed a cautious sigh of relief when he opened his computer and saw Wisconsin had flipped blue in the morning, breathed a bigger sigh of relief when Michigan followed it, and spent a week feeling good when Pennsylvania finally flipped for Sanders. It’s a far from ideal election result, of course, with Sanders’s power likely to be sharply constrained, but still, there’s a President who might really do some good! If nothing else, he thinks Sanders will be good at using the soft power of the Presidency to shift the Overton Window. He’s very excited that Sanders will be going to the White House.

#politics #election 2020 #alternate history

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grammartrolls · 5 years ago

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Stepping In: A Hyperbolic Drabble

that’s right i’m actually posting writing on here deal with it

ship: hyperbole (foseti x apiuma) (and a little bit of apiuma o8< natter >8o foseti)

When Foseti Mafdet agreed to play a video game with a bunch of people she barely knew, if at all, she never expected to become a god. She wasn’t much of a gamer, after all, so when her moirail told her about some game called “SGRUB” in which the players make “a new world” she assumed it was some kind of metaphor.

But here she was, a newly made god of a newly made universe, arguing with a bunch of other newly made gods about how the newly made rules should function in this newly made universe.

It was exhausting and excruciating.

Watching the highbloods argue for a stricter caste structure, arguing with her more radical minority for a deletion of the hierarchy…it all became very tedious very quickly. It was a new, different kind of tediousness than Foseti was familiar with. It was…newly made.

Godly, even. You know, Foseti used to be an atheist before this all happened, but all of this bullshit has made her more open to the idea that perhaps there are gods…and maybe they were just as exhausting and annoying as these ones. It would explain why their world is so fucked up.

Foseti wished she was still an atheist. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

Back on her home planet, discussions took a different approach. Sometimes they were violent, but Foseti tried her best to keep them peaceful. Terse, but peaceful. But now things are significantly different. Now, the two sides were no longer arguing for the long term or the theoretical. Not that Foseti had any desire to argue in pure theory, being a woman of pure praxis, but regardless, discussions were now discussing…the Now. The immediate. The Thing That Is Literally About To Happen.

The birth of a new universe.

…It got exhausting. Breaks needed to be taken. So here she was, taking a break… when who chose to saunter in but one Apiuma Abella.

Oh, how Foseti hated Apiuma Abella.

There were many annoying things that happened at these godly debates. That seadweller, Pequod, and his outlandish idea for a vengeance-based universe…the clown, Latena, arguing for a stronger military, Shakti being…Shakti. Even her own moirail got on her nerves, with his refusal to care about how stupid his optics look when he screams about “lowblood supremacy”.

But by far the worst actor in these debates was Apiuma Abella.

It’s easy to see that Apiuma should, one would think, have the most skin in this game. Foseti knew that Apiuma didn’t even leave her house back on their home planet because she would immediately be culled in the street. Apiuma had a chance to help Foseti create a new universe built on equality, where lowbloods finally had the rights they deserved.

But, no, apparently Apiuma is blissfully unaware of any oppression that existed in their world.

At least, that’s what it looks like to Foseti! It’s how it would look to anyone!

The reason Apiuma was easily the worst part of these debates is her insistence on giving “everyone a chance to speak”. Ugh. What grift.

The very idea that Apiuma, easily the most oppressed person here, would insist on hearing “everyone’s side”, when one of the “gods” at this table wants her and every other lowblood dead was downright insulting to Foseti.

And here came she, likely going to spread her “moderate tolerance” somewhere else. Not that…there was anywhere else to go, of course. They were on a…giant spaceship… whatever, it’s irrelevant.

As Apiuma passed Foseti, she shot a quick look at her.

Foseti repaid it in full. “Apiuma.” She said, tart.

“Foseti…how’s it going?” Apiuma responded, attempting to veil her clear upset…ness.

“Not good.” The rustblood responded coolly. She wanted it to be obvious.

“Oh. I’m sorry. That’s a shame.” Apiuma said, perhaps in an attempt to genuinely feel for Foseti, before attempting to leave again.

“It’s because of you, you know.” Foseti said, rising.

Apiuma stopped and turned around. “What? What did I do?” She said, incredulous, hands on her hips.

Foseti stepped forward and stared the yellowblood down. It was times like these, their confrontations, where the aesthetic difference between the two of them was thrown into stark contrast. Foseti was taller, slimmer, but not without muscle. She had tattoos and piercings. Her hair was big and loud. She was a punk! Apiuma, meanwhile, was small. Squishy. Cute. Undeniably cute. Frustratingly adorable. And soft. And nice to look at, yes, Foseti can admit it! But she still hated her. But, god, she was cute. Being a kismesis is weird sometimes.

In these confrontations, Foseti couldn’t help but feel some sense of satisfaction, even if it was buried under all the anger, in the visual tension between the two of them. Foseti was staring her down, tall and lean. Apiuma was staring up, not weakly, Foseti could admit. There was a fire in her adorably and comically big eyes. The contrast was attractive to the both of them. They were both equally strong in their relationship, and although they despised each other, they gave each other a fire and a passion. This was, Foseti presumed, the essence of a kismessitude. The two of them hated each other. But, god, it was hot. Being a kismesis is weird in general.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about something less personal, of course.

“What did you do? You platformed a supremacist!”

“What? What does that even mean?”

Of course Apiuma didn’t understand.

“Of course you don’t understand…you are so insistent on hearing “other opinions” that you refuse to deplatform one that should absolutely not have a seat at the table.” Foseti snipped, bitter.

“A seat at the…are you talking about Pequod? You know he did a lot to help us in the game! He gave the killing blow to the Black King! We all saw it! He literally helped us win the whole game! He earned his seat at the table like all of us. Also, can we go back to ‘of course you don’t understand’…? What the heck is that supposed to mean!” Apiuma buzzed.

Foseti crossed her arms. It’s true that Pequod did a lot in the campaign. That weapon of his, the Stygian Shade…? It certainly carries a lot of firepower. But whatever, his actions don’t change the fact that his beliefs are toxic as shit. “He literally still believes in a blood hierarchy and actively advocates for it. He literally just did that. You were watching, weren’t you?”

“Of course I was watching!” Apiuma huffed, also crossing her arms. A yellow blush colored her cheeks just a bit.

Cute. Foseti tried to suppress a satisfied grin.

“This isn’t even a political discussion...” Apiuma spat, somewhat under her breath.

“What! What are you even talking about! ‘This isn’t a political discussion’? That’s ridiculous, and you fucking know it. When discussing the making of a new universe, the politics of that universe are kind of vital, don’t you think? And including supremacists like Pequod, or grifters like Marina, or war-advocators like Latena is not the morally responsible thing to do, don’t you think?!”

“Well, if it’s such a political discussion, I don’t see why you have to involve everyone, especially people who want to stay out of the politics, like me!” Apiuma burst.

Oh, here it is. The moment Apiuma pulls out the ‘apolitical’ card, and Foseti gets to pull out all the stops.

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot you don’t actually care.” Foseti said dryly, turning around.

Apiuma gasped. “How dare you!” She rushed in front of the rustblood. “How dare you suggest such a thing!”

“Well, if you actually cared, you would be willing to take the steps needed for equality.” Foseti shrugged. “But instead you choose to be a caste traitor.”

“C-Caste traitor!?” Apiuma repeated, shocked.

“I said what I said. You have repeatedly refused to take the necessary steps for lowblood liberation, and continue to do so now.” Foseti leaned forward, and rested her hands on her knees, getting close to Apiuma’s adorable face. “What other word is there to use but traitor, babe?”

Apiuma puffed, clearly offended.

Normally, Foseti would not use such…incendiary tactics. She was normally far more professional than this, but there was something about Apiuma…

“What, so I’m supposed to join the revolution like a ‘good lowblood’? I’m supposed to be blacklisted from every major city, I’m supposed to be enemy no. 1, like you, babe? Sometimes, people just want to cope.”

Foseti backed up quickly, a bit surprised. Apiuma didn’t usually have stops to pull out like this. She was kind of impressed.

“Besides, it really is none of your business at all what I think or believe or do with my time. I have a right to do things completely unrelated to politics. It’s, honestly, pretty offensive, really, how much you harp on my apolitical…ness, since it’s obvious you only do that because I’m the lowest blood color among the whole team. Why should I have to be staunchly political, like you? Because I’m a lowblood? A near-mutant? It’s super unfair and annoying, honestly.” Apiuma crossed her arms, and looked away. She was frowning, but Foseti could see a satisfied glint in her eye.

Clever. Foseti wasn’t expecting all of that. Not that Apiuma wasn’t clever, of course, but this is usually the part where she gets flustered and walks away. Or they make out. It’s really 50/50 at this point.

Foseti averted her eyes. She honestly didn’t know what to say. It’s…possible that…Apiuma might…be right. But it doesn’t matter.

“The fact still stands that your refusal to stand for our rights shows that you, on some level, don’t care. Or you just can’t be bothered. Either way, it’s disappointing. And yes, a large part of that is because of your blood color. I find it unbelievable how apolitical you are because of your caste. You have the most to gain and the most to lose in the movement, so why don’t you choose to stand up?”

Foseti prided herself on that answer, especially since it clearly upset Apiuma more.

“I hate revolutionaries!” Apiuma threw her hands up, clearly frustrated. “Nothing anyone does is ever good enough for you! Why can’t you just accept that some people don’t care about politics without calling us ‘grifters’! That a lot of us just want to live our lives and not have to think about any of that stuff!”

Foseti was surprised. And angry. Not at Apiuma responding at all, no, she found a great satisfaction in their debate. But the idea that anyone, especially with a blood color as low as Apiuma’s, wouldn’t want to think about the problems that plague their society, wouldn’t want to fix it, made Foseti furious.

“…Whatever.” The rustblood said, bile coating her words. “I shouldn’t keep you. You probably have clown makeup to paint on, don’t you? Faygo to drink? I bet you have to go play ‘make-believe highblood’.” Foseti crossed her arms again and looked away, satisfied at such a line.

“That would invalidate everything…you say…” There was a silence.

Apiuma wasn’t responding to Foseti’s insult. That wasn’t normal.

Foseti looked down to see a completely different expression on her kismesis’ face.

Shock, offense and hurt was splayed on Apiuma’s cheek. The small yellowblood looked down at her feet.

“I…” Foseti could hear Apiuma’s voice shake. Her face was obscured from view, but immediately Foseti got that feeling in the pit of her stomach that she said something she really, really shouldn’t have. Apiuma held her hands together, and Foseti could see they were shaking. Oh, no, no, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. A kismesis isn’t supposed to make their partner cry. Er…well…this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

“Hey…” Foseti reached out.

Apiuma ran away.

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit, did she just fuck this up?

“Wow, you fucked that up.” A different voice.

Foseti turned around to see a familiar, bespectacled, nihilistic near-jade. “Oh, it’s you…” Foseti sighed. “What are you doing here? Er—how long were you standing here?”

“Enough to know you have royally fucked up.” Natter Schlau stepped forward toward the rustblood.

Foseti didn’t have particularly high regards for Natter either. She was, perhaps, just as apolitical as her moirail-turned-matesprit, but at the very least she has a more philosophical justification. It’s a bullshit one, but at least she has one. Regardless, most of her interactions with the nihilist were unpleasant, but that’s probably just because Natter is an unpleasant person.

“Why didn’t you rush to your matesprit’s aid earlier?” Foseti asked, with a slight sarcastic twinge.

Natter shrugged. “I assumed it was some strange blackrom courtship ritual.”

Foseti shrugged back. “…It kind of was. But…ah shit…I really went too far with that last comment. The ‘make-believe highblood’ comment. That was a terrible thing to say.”

It truly was a shitty thing to say.

“Yes, terrible would be the key word. How did you even know that?”

“Know what? I made that up.” Foseti rubbed her temples. “It…it was hyperbole, you know? I was being facetious.”

“Oh…” Natter groaned slightly, before rubbing her eyes underneath her glasses. “Well. Congratulations. You have picked upon a very sensitive wound.” She gestured sarcastically. “Good job.”

“Wait…don’t tell me…”

“Alright, I won’t.”

“I’m being serious. Apiuma…actually pretends to be a highblood?” Foseti asked in disbelief.

Natter sighed. “…Sometimes. I have caught her doing that, yes. She practices putting face paint on and pretending to be a purpleblood. Honestly, I don’t know if she is play-pretending at being a highblood or genuinely desires to become a subjuggulator, or a convert, or however that heathen cult works,”

God, Natter could be an asshole, even to the assholes.

“Regardless,” the near-jade continued, “She sometimes practices putting on clown makeup. I’ve asked her about it. We’ve discussed it, but as of now she does not desire to discuss it further, so I leave it at that.”

Foseti sighed and ran her hands through her hair. This…this was weird.

“Oh…fuck…I fucked up so bad.” She began massaging her eyes, feeling a headache coming on.

“Yes.”

Well, at least Natter was direct, if a bit abrupt.

Foseti struggled a bit. She was not a bad kismesis. Apiuma has said that, and Foseti understands what a bad kismessitude looked like. No, neither of them were overly abusive or wanted each other dead. It was just little jabs and pokes, stabs and gripes, that made a good pitch relationship. And Foseti was pretty sure that she and Apiuma have that. Well. It might become ‘had’, if Foseti doesn’t go patch things up. Oh, and Foseti definitely knows she’s going have to be the one to fix this. But apologies are not…her strong suit. She’s apologized before, of course, as has anyone, but it never gets easier. She sighed.

“I’ll fix it. Don’t worry.”

“I am not worried. Apiuma is stronger than you think. She is very unstable, of course, but who of us isn’t?”

Again with the thoughtful insights. God, Natter was insufferable. But she was right.

“However!” Foseti pointed out. “Her unstable nature does not make my points any less valid.” She said, mainly to herself.

Natter cocked an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Our debate. I know when I go apologize she’s going to try and say that her feelings being hurt makes her arguments somehow more valid. They aren’t.”

“Oh. That. How tedious you two are sometimes.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Fair enough.” Natter pushed up her glasses. “What was that whole event even about anyway?”

“Ugh!” Foseti cried out. “What it’s always about! Apiuma is so…apolitical. I don’t get it.”

“Oh, right, the same thing you two are always, always talking about.” The exasperation in her voice was obvious, as it always was. “Honestly, I don’t think your argument is as valid as you say.”

“What makes you say that.” Foseti asked tersely, with another cross of the arms.

Natter sighed greatly as she is wont to do. “Very well. I shall explain. I believe there are several things about Apiuma that you simply do not understand. Mainly, her disposition. It is simply not cut out for politics. As you have seen, Apiuma is a highly sensitive person. Personally, I think that makes her beautiful and empathetic, but it is not a very practical skill with politics, I think you would agree?”

Foseti shrugged. “I guess.” Natter did have a point. Foseti herself has had to cultivate a pretty tough skin, and a soft egg like Apiuma probably wouldn’t thrive if she was in Foseti’s position.

“Furthermore, Apiuma has had more hardship than you could possibly know. She has not left her home in sweeps. Well, I mean…now she has, but before we began SGRUB, she hadn’t walked out her own door in a long time. She has suffered greatly, due to her, frankly frustrating, refusal to go hemoanon. And, honestly, I think you would agree that her refusal to hide her blood color is somewhat radical, yes?”

Foseti looked away. “Sure. I can admit that.”

“In all this time hiding away, it would have been easy for Apiuma to cultivate an attitude of negativity, of sullenness or anger. But, instead, she chose joy. She chose…pretty things…” Natter paused, slightly lost in appreciation for her matesprit. Despite her dislike of both of them, Foseti could acknowledge that they had a very healthy relationship. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t a bit jealous.

“Anyway. Apiuma has turned herself into a person that would rather focus on joy and positivity than being mentally bogged down by politics and revolutionary action.”

Foseti puffed a bit. “You can be a revolutionary and be joyful and positive.” She said, prickled.

“Ah yes, because you are clearly a person overcome with virulent joy and light.”

Foseti narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at the nihilist. “Look.” She said, sharp. “I’m only harsh and cold because my movement requires me to be so.”

Natter chuckled a bit, and pushed up her glasses once more; a classic smug Natter manuever, one that she performed every time she felt she made a prescient argument.

“Do you think Apiuma should become you?”

Foseti stopped. Huh. Hm.

That’s a weird question. Foseti thought about it for a moment.

“Let us phrase it like this. Do you think the world would be better if people in it were more like you?”

Foseti fumbled. “I mean…” She means…it kind of would be? If people were more practical, simple, honest, and strong, the world would be a better place. It would certainly be better for the lowbloods.

“Y…Yes. It would be. The world would be better if people acted like me.”

“And do you see a problem with that mindset?”

Of course Foseti did. The moment she verbalized it, she recognized the problem.

“Not everyone can be Foseti Mafdet. Some people are just really not cut out for it, and it would be counterproductive, irresponsible, harmful and stupid to believe otherwise. I am sure you would agree.” Natter stated, frankly.

“You’re right.” Foseti conceded.

“And someone like Apiuma is absolutely not cut out for it. Obviously. She herself would agree. And so she has every right to not engage in something that would clearly cause her great mental duress. Besides, she kind of already is under mental duress. The very act of existing as she does gives her a great amount of mental struggles. I think you can understand that, being a lowblood yourself.”

“Of course.” Foseti nodded. Yes, she herself has long buried trauma that simply comes from existing as a lowblooded troll. The attacks, the losses…yes, Foseti understood that pain acutely. “I get that.”

“So it would be irresponsible to put her into further mental and physical danger. Apiuma is a lot more vulnerable than you.”

Foseti nodded. “Fine. I can admit that she doesn’t have to become a revolutionary. But she could afford to care more about our plight.”

“And who are you to say she doesn’t? You do not hear the conversations we have, her and I, and you would be surprised at some of the opinions that Apiuma possess. They are more radical than you might think.” Natter replied.

Foseti narrowed her eyes a bit. “Even if that is true, it sometimes feels like she doesn’t even know how we suffer.”

Natter scoffed. “What a preposterous notion. Of course she does! She is, arguably, more oppressed than you! Not that we should play that kind of game. Again, she cannot even leave her house.”

Foseti raised her hands defensively. “Alright, alright, I get it, I get it. I may not agree with her, but I get it.”

“Oh, do not mistake me,” Natter interrupted. “I have no desire to defend my matesprit regarding some of her arguments. I think several of her opinions are rather indefensible. The idea that someone like Pequod should have any say in how this new universe unfolds is demonstrably stupid. The man can barely function as a social being.”

Foseti chuckled a bit. Hm. Maybe Natter wasn’t as apolitical as Foseti had thought her to be.

“I agree with you that someone like that should probably be deplatformed. Apiuma’s fixation on not hurting anyone’s feelings is rather ill-advised in this regard. Her repeated refusal to disavow outwardly supremacist rhetoric and people is something her and I are working on. Frankly, it disturbs me that she thinks like this. What if some brigand or blackguard demands something heinous of her and she cannot find it in herself to refuse, for fear of hurting their feelings? It is something that frightens me, not that much frightens me, of course. No, I don’t think any of us are qualified to be gods. Even me. Well…” Natter thought about it. “No. I am as flawed an individual as any thinking being. Really, what is thought? What is a being?”

Wow. Even when Natter makes a cogent argument, she is still insufferable. It’s a skill, honestly.

“Anyway. This is why I believe that she shouldn’t even be involved in this discussion. But it seems you have somewhat forced her hand.”

“What?” Foseti replied, curious.

“Well. You are kind of forcing all of us to attend these meetings.” Natter said, frankly.

“I think that’s a reasonable thing to do.” Foseti replied, a bit offended by the implication. “We all beat the game, so those of us who have reasonable beliefs should work together to create our new universe.”

“And yet you find yourself frustrated at Apiuma for being bad at realpolitik when you yourself have forced herself into the position! You have created your own problem here, Foseti,” Natter removed her glasses and polished them. “You force her to do something she is bad at, and then hate her for being bad at it. I am not saying the two of you cannot have conflict. You are kismeses. You hate each other. That is, how you say, the point. But you should at least acknowledge the slight fuckery of the issue here.” The jade punctuated her point by slipping her glasses back onto her face, and gazed at Foseti expectedly.

Foseti shifted slightly. “Fine. She doesn’t have to come to the discussions anymore. But what in the shit is with the ‘make-believe highblood’ stuff!” Foseti threw her hands up in frustration.

Natter furrowed her brows. It looked like genuine offense was taken there. “You should know, Apiuma fully understands that her fixation on highbloods is extremely unhealthy. That is another thing her and I are discussing. And frankly, her relationship with her own marginalized identity is absolutely none of your business. You had no justification to make a comment as hurtful as that, and furthermore, you have no right to continue to poke the wound. It would be best for the both of you if you both forgot that you said that, but since you cannot, I would suggest you do not mention it again. Besides, who are you to judge how a lowblood copes with their lot in life? Some of us fight back, some of us fantasize, all of us know our own pain. It is offensive to assume otherwise.” Natter crossed her arms, clearly tense.

Foseti turned away from the near-jade, caught in her own thoughts. Natter was right. This obsession with Apiuma’s trauma responses is horrible for their relationship. She turned back.

“You’re right. Thanks.”

Natter sighed slightly, loosening up a bit. “Of course. I care deeply for my matesprit, and desire her to have a healthy kismessitude. By the way,” Natter narrowed her eyes to slits. “If it decays to abuse, I cannot guarantee your safety.”

Foseti cocked a very unconvinced brow. “What even is your strife specibus?”

Natter shifted slightly. “…I wield a very dangerous shovel.”

“…Right.” Foseti bat the issue away. “Anyway. Thanks.”

A sense of guilt still hung in her head, but she felt more open knowing what the next steps to take are.

Foseti looked toward Natter. “You know…you’re a pretty great mediator.”

“Hm.” The near-jade thought about it for a moment. “I suppose I am. Anyway. I must be off.” Natter began to walk past Foseti, in Apiuma’s direction.

“Where are you going?” Foseti asked.

“I am going to comfort my girlfriend. I wish you the best, Foseti.”

And with that, the nihilist left, following her matesprit. What an asshole. She was right, of course, but she was still an asshole.

Foseti Mafdet took a deep, godly, breath, and decided the next best course of action would be to head to her room to sleep and think.

...And so she did. And the dreams were good.

#writing #hyperbole #natter #apiuma #foseti #here #i really like Hyperbole and i have been wanting to write this for a while and i cranked it all out in 4 hours on a plane #i am proud of myself #drabble

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shamoor-blog2 · 5 years ago

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Everything To Know About Belt Sanders

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Pick a belt, however no belt

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Belt sanders apply a considerable measure of power on the work. So if your work isn't safely held, it'll slide away from or directly into you. Cinches disrupt everything, except a straightforward stop on the suitable side of the workpiece (photograph, "Utilize Good Technique" above) will shield it from sliding. Pick a stop that is somewhat more slender than the workpiece so the sander will clear it at the edge.

Trim After Sanding

It's difficult to shield a belt sander from gouging or adjusting over the finishes of a board. So in the event that you can, belt-sand the board before slicing it to definite length. You can then securely proceed onward to a palm sander and better corn meal.

Watch Out on Plywood

Belt sanders take off genuine measures of wood, so they can wreck pressed wood essentially in a flash. In the event that you need to sand strong wood edging flush with compressed wood, draw a pencil line on the compressed wood to disclose to you when the sander begins eliminating facade. In the event that you have variable speed, dial it down.

Belt sander upkeep

To begin with, ensure the belt is arranged appropriately. A few belts have a favored course, demonstrated by a bolt within. Nondirectional belts can be introduced in any case. The main change you'll likely need to make is "following" to keep the belt focused on the roller. Hold the sander up, turn it on, and check whether the belt either rubs against the lodging or starts working its way off the rollers. With the trigger on, modify the following handle until the belt is fixated on the rollers. You may need to make a slight change when the sander is on the wood. On the off chance that your sander has programmed following, you don't have to meddle with any of that hogwash.

A few sanders have variable speed. You can go at greatest speed more often than not, yet you'll need to choke it back for fragile work.

Keep the Belt Clean

Filthy belts make for awful work. A belt-cleaning stick will eliminate the pitch development that occurs with all woods, particularly pine or sappy woods. Push it against the moving belt, or for bigger sanders, clip the stick in a tight clamp and sand it.

Useful for Rough Sharpening

You can utilize a belt sander for unpleasant honing of apparatuses like tomahawks, scoops, blades and etches. Eliminate the residue pack and eliminate all residue from the sander (starts and residue are an awful mix), at that point utilize a zirconia belt for best outcomes.

Overhaul your sander

Belt sanders are basic instruments that don't require numerous upgrades. In any case, in the event that you utilize your belt sander in the shop, think about these two updates.

Residue assortment

Belt sanders consistently accompany an implicit residue pack that gathers the majority of the coarser residue and requirements standard exhausting. Nonetheless, a lot of fine residue despite everything gets into the air. In case you're doing a ton of belt sanding, it merits getting a hose that permits you to interface your sander to a shop vacuum. You'll have the option to sand the entire day with nary a spot of residue (lower photograph).

You can at times utilize the hose that accompanied your shop vacuum, however it's normally excessively huge or excessively firm. The option is a super-adaptable, little distance across hose intended for dust assortment. You can get one at a carpentry strength store or on the web (search "vacuum hose"). I utilize one made by Porter-Cable that cost $25. Residue ports shift broadly (some are square, which is a test), so you may need to mess around to get the hose to fit. There are business connectors ($10 to $20; get one when you purchase your hose) or you can cobble something along with—you got it—conduit tape. It merits the object, however: no residue in your workspace.

Shop-made stand

A helpful adornment on the off chance that you do a lot of carpentry is a stand that holds your sander on its side, topsy turvy or vertical, permitting you to carry the work to the instrument rather than the other way around. The structure of the stand is totally subject to the state of your sander, so we won't give plans. In any case, it by and large includes a few layers of compressed wood, each with patterns to oblige the pieces of the sander that jut, in addition to several hose braces or other cinching gadgets to hold the sander safely and for information. click here

#best oscillating spindle sander #porter cable belt disc sander #best random orbital sander

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artyrogue · 5 years ago

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Blind Date Gaming: Pac In Time

Tonight's date was an interesting one to say the least. It was with Pac-Man, the iconic game character from Namco that helped build video games as a mainstream activity! The only issue was that it wasn't...JUST Pac-Man. No, it was a pun and a spinoff all in one. It was... Pac In Time!

Soak in the colors, 'cos from here out we're mostly back to 4-color palettes.

I've seen some of the other Pac-Man spinoffs before and they just never felt right. There was some dumb point-and-click game on the SNES where Pac-Man clearly had a lobotomy, some pinball game, and that one where he was fighting a bunch of nerds on some floating platform called 'final destination' or whatever. So yeah, they're typically lame attempts to make a buck based on the identity of one of gaming's most well-known IPs. I didn't expect much, then, going in. It was a bit bias of me, sure, but I was still willing to give it a chance. The first thing I was presented with was a super-long, slow-scrolling wall of text with absolutely no music or sound throughout the whole thing. Brilliant first impression, that.

'Crazy events' here means 'binge eating countless unmarked medications within the confines of a series of neon-infused tubes with occasional spontaneous manifestations of fruit and/or keys'.

Okay, okay, sure. Some ghost witch sends Pac-Man back in time and now he has to travel through different zones to find a way back to the present. That could have been summed up much more succinctly; in fact, I basically relayed all the information you need to know right there. It also really doesn't matter at all in the long run, so my heart reaches out to the poor writer whose hopes were squandered when Pac in Time didn't end up being their gateway to better writing gigs. What matters isn't the story here, it's the gameplay! So what do we have?

It's a platformer. A pretty floaty one at that. You always slide all over, with momentum that takes a bunch of effort to dissipate. Jumping follows the Mario 64 school of gaining height in each successive jump, but it really doesn't seem necessary. It's quite bad and takes some getting used to. There's an additional aspect to the game that helps bring puzzle aspects to it: powerups. You're given a few in each level that give you different abilities and can sometime pick up (or lose!) them along the way as well. They don't really seem to fit into the typical Pac-Man lore, though. Unless there's some fanfic where Pac-Man can shoot fireballs and swing around like Spiderman?

Yes, that is a screenshot of Pac-Man shooting a Kamehameha at a shark. This is fine.

Some levels are pretty interesting, but a lot of them are short and kind of dull. Most of the time you don't even end up using half of the powerups they give you. I will say, though, that the grappling hook was well-programmed and a lot of fun to mess around with. Sometimes there are issues canceling grappling momentum when an enemy is right in front of you, but otherwise it's liberating to swing like a monkey through a level in mere seconds.

Wheeeeee!

Somewhere around world 3, though, things start to take a turn for the worse. For the most part, enemies are tame and take a major backseat to the puzzles and powerup adventuring. In the jungle world, you start to see some annoying and poorly-programmed enemies marring your fun. Some foes relentlessly track you down, some change their velocity in unpredictable ways, some blast into the center of the screen as soon as you approach, and more. It starts feeling more like I Wanna Be the Guy, a game I loathe not for its toughness, but for it's cheap death tricks and poor design. Games like that aren't about skill as much as they are about rote memorization. That's...not fun to me. Make the obstacles visible, not surprises. I'd rather spend time memorizing something useful. Although apparently my brain seems to define 'useful' as being able to list the first 386 pokemon and recalling room layouts for a mall that has been dead and destroyed for like 15 years?

I suddenly have flashbacks to Super Meat Boy, although that game was fair and up front with its obstacles. This buzzsaw popped outta nowhere, which I guess is standard in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

I had to look up a walkthrough on a certain level, too, where the only way to progress was apparently to walk off a cliff into a pool of lava. Then, an invisible air stream carries you across the lava to safety. Jumping the gap kills you and does not reveal an air stream, there are no indicators that walking off is a good idea, nothing. Just know the trick or be stuck. Great. The walkthrough on GameFAQs even says that the walkthrough's writer was stuck on this level until someone gave them a tip. That's...not exactly a good sign of game design. There were other annoyances, like teleporters teleporting stones higher than you: if you walk into one too quickly after pushing a stone into it, the stone appears above you and crushes you to death. Also, many levels host a plethora of arrow signs that don't make lick of sense.

Right, right...I get it now. It's all so clear where I have to go!

I got through world 4, and looking up a gameplay video reveals there are 4 more worlds to go, but I had my fill. This date isn't going anywhere I want to be. So yeah! No second date here. I've also found via the comments of that video that the game is actually a reskin of another game on DOS called 'Fury of the Furries'. They basically just turned the main character into Pac-Man and made some lame music tracks that sound like the one ditty from the arcade game. Even the enemies and final boss are the same. Boo! Get some originality or keep the Furries! I mean I know the internet in general has some hangups with them, but I've never had a bad experience with a Furry myself, let alone felt their Fury! Although if the world followed this game's lead, all furry conventions would turn into massive Pac-Man cosplay events, and I would definitely pay to go see that.

I found a furry! Except it kind of beat me to a pulp, but I guess I deserve it since I stole his game.

Before I end this, am I crazy or does part of the Beach world theme sound vaguely like some Mega Man track? Listen here and skip the first 50 horrid seconds to get to the part I mean. I swear, it sounds like something I've heard before, but I can't tell which track it was. Mega Man has too many Men to keep their themes straight. Maybe I should invest my useless memorization into Mega Man theme recall instead.

And so ends another date. I'll be looking around for something else, thank you! I will say, though, that today's Sprite of Passage is a keeper. Put this as a war decoration on your uniform and go speak of the fierce battles you went through to earn it! Don't be surprised if no one gives you any sympathy or anything though. They might instead give you the number of a psychiatrist. Maybe that shrink will give you pills and you can lay them out in a maze to eat them or something? Pac it all in!

They finally, really did it...YOU MANIACS!! YOU BLEW IT UP!! DAMN YOUUUU!!

#blinddategaming #gameboy #pacintime #pacman

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greenshanks · 5 years ago

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What are Belt Sanders?

Belt sanders are multiuse instruments. They are regularly utilized for cutting to a scribed line (photograph), sanding harsh surfaces, leveling surfaces (like a substitution board in a hardwood floor) and freehand adjusting and forming. Since they have a ton of intensity and can deal with coarse corn meal, they exceed expectations at the fast evacuation of wood.

Belt sanders are the large, amazing gorillas of the sanding scene. Hardly any devices can spare you as much time—or wreck your venture quicker. In case you're new to belt sanders or have been baffled by yours, read on to discover how to monitor click here

Ideal for scribing

A typical use for a little belt sander is scribing. You can step by step sneak up on a bended line for an ideal fit. On a cover ledge, ensure the heading of belt travel pushes the overlay down.

The Top Tool for Rough Flattening

Belt sanders exceed expectations at the quick evacuation of wood, making them the best handheld force instrument for leveling and smoothing harsh sheets. Start at an edge to the grain for forceful leveling, at that point get done with the grain. 80-coarseness is useful for beginning, at that point change to 120-coarseness.

Step by step instructions to Choose the Best Belt Sander

The best multipurpose belt sander takes a 3-in.- wide belt. You'll see machines intended for more extensive and smaller belts, however they're for particular undertakings.

Inside the 3-in. class, there are littler instruments that take 3 x 18-in. belts, medium size machines that take 3 x 21-in. belts and a few huge sanders that take 3 x 24-in. belts. The littler apparatuses are lighter and simpler to utilize one-gave for molding and scribing. They're useful for littler work and easygoing use.

The bigger apparatuses have increasingly surface region and weight for smoothing wide surfaces. They're better for greater work and shop use. The 3 x 21-in. machines are a decent trade off.

You'll discover 3 x 18-in. sanders for $50 to $150 and 3 x 21-in. sanders for $100 to $250 when searching for the best belt sander.

You'll additionally discover littler belt sanders that take 2-1/2-in.- wide belts. They're light and extremely convenient for one-gave use. Sanders with 4-in.- wide belts are substantial machines best left to cabinetmakers.

Pick a belt, yet no belt

By and by, I utilize 80-and 120-coarseness belts routinely, and seldom, 50-coarseness. Corn meal coarser than 50 leave profound scratches that are hard to expel. What's more, in case you're doing better sanding, you're in an ideal situation utilizing an arbitrary circle sander. Recall one of the principles of sanding: You can skirt one evaluation of coarseness, yet it sits around idly and you'll simply destroy belts avoiding two. For instance, you can go from 80 to 120, skirting 100 coarseness, however don't go from 50 to 120.

Aluminum oxide is the conventional coarseness material. You'll see it in more affordable khaki-shading structure, great in the event that you need a dispensable belt, and longer-enduring, dim earthy colored premium belts. Be that as it may, for corn meal of 80 and coarser, numerous individuals presently favor zirconia belts (here and there called "planer" belts). They have more keen, harder cutting particles that cut all the more forcefully, last more and don't stop up as without any problem. These belts are generally splendid blue or purple. Zirconia belts cost somewhat more than premium aluminum oxide belts.

Step by step instructions to Use a Belt Sander

Try not to push down on the sander; let its weight accomplish the work. Go gradually, cover passes and permit the device to go past the end without plunging. Be mindful so as not to tip the sander or alter speed or course. Put the string behind you so it's off the beaten path.

Watch Out for Gouging

This painted board shows a typical issue: horseshoe-formed gouges toward the finish of a board. To forestall gouges, utilize spotless, new belts, maintain a strategic distance from corn meal better than 120, and hold the plate added to the repertoire (the platen) perfect and liberated from dust development.

Belt sander wellbeing tips

Belt sanders are generally protected devices, yet it's despite everything savvy to play it safe.

Wear hearing assurance—these children are LOUD!

Try not to inhale dust. It's not simply terrible; it's awful for you. Wear a residue cover while sanding, except if you rig up a shop vacuum for dust assortment (photograph, beneath).

Unplug the device before changing belts or purging the residue sack. I have a scar that validates the significance of this apparently grandmotherly insurance.

On the off chance that you utilize the belt sander to sand metal, you'll make flashes, which can light a fire on the off chance that they blend in with the sawdust in the machine and the residue sack. Blow or vacuum the residue out of the sander before you use it on metal, and evacuate the residue pack.

Ensure the trigger is off before connecting the sander. Belt sanders have a locking button that holds the switch in the "on" position. Sounds kinda "duh," however trust me, it occurs. You don't need the sander to fly over the room when you plug it in, isn't that right?

Belt sanders apply a considerable measure of power on the work. So if your work isn't safely held, it'll slide away from or directly into you. Clips disrupt the general flow, however a basic stop on the suitable side of the workpiece (photograph, "Utilize Good Technique" above) will shield it from sliding. Pick a stop that is somewhat more slender than the workpiece so the sander will clear it at the edge.

Trim After Sanding

It's difficult to shield a belt sander from gouging or adjusting over the finishes of a board. So on the off chance that you can, belt-sand the board before slicing it to definite length. You can then securely proceed onward to a palm sander and better corn meal.

Watch Out on Plywood

Belt sanders take off genuine measures of wood, so they can wreck pressed wood essentially immediately. On the off chance that you need to sand strong wood edging flush with pressed wood, draw a pencil line on the compressed wood to disclose to you when the sander begins evacuating facade. In the event that you have variable speed, dial it down.

Belt sander upkeep

In the first place, ensure the belt is situated appropriately. A few belts have a favored bearing, showed by a bolt within. Nondirectional belts can be introduced in any case. The main change you'll likely need to make is "following" to keep the belt focused on the roller. Hold the sander up, turn it on, and check whether the belt either rubs against the lodging or starts working its way off the rollers. With the trigger on, change the following handle until the belt is fixated on the rollers. You may need to make a slight change when the sander is on the wood. On the off chance that your sander has programmed following, you don't have to play with any of that babble.

A few sanders have variable speed. You can go at greatest speed more often than not, yet you'll need to choke it back for sensitive work.'

Keep the Belt Clean

Filthy belts make for awful work. A belt-cleaning stick will expel the pitch development that occurs with all woods, particularly pine or sappy woods. Push it against the moving belt, or for bigger sanders, brace the stick in a tight clamp and sand it.

Useful for Rough Sharpening

You can utilize a belt sander for unpleasant honing of devices like tomahawks, scoops, blades and etches. Evacuate the residue pack and expel all residue from the sander (starts and residue are a terrible blend), at that point utilize a zirconia belt for best outcomes.

Redesign your sander

Belt sanders are straightforward apparatuses that don't require numerous upgrades. Be that as it may, in the event that you utilize your belt sander in the shop, think about these two redesigns.

Residue assortment

Belt sanders consistently accompany an implicit residue pack that gathers the majority of the coarser residue and requirements ordinary purging. Notwithstanding, a lot of fine residue despite everything gets into the air. In case you're doing a great deal of belt sanding, it merits getting a hose that permits you to interface your sander to a shop vacuum. You'll have the option to sand the entire day with nary a spot of residue (lower photograph).

To get more specific brands or related information check https://toolsearchkit.com/best-belt-sander/

You can now and again utilize the hose that accompanied your shop vacuum, yet it's typically excessively enormous or excessively solid. The option is a super-adaptable, little width hose intended for dust assortment. You can get one at a carpentry strength store or on the web (search "vacuum hose"). I utilize one made by Porter-Cable that cost $25. Residue ports differ broadly (some are square, which is a test), so you may need to mess around to get the hose to fit. There are business connectors ($10 to $20; get one when you purchase your hose) or you can cobble something along with—you got it—channel tape. It merits the complain, however: no residue in your workspace.

Shop-made stand

A helpful embellishment on the off chance that you do a lot of carpentry is a stand that holds your sander on its side, topsy turvy or vertical, permitting you to carry the work to the instrument rather than the other way around. The structure of the stand is totally reliant on the state of your sander, so we won't give plans. In any case, it by and large includes a few layers of pressed wood, each with patterns to oblige the pieces of the sander that project, in addition to two or three hose clips or other cinching gadgets to hold the sander safely. Add another bit of compressed wood to go about as a table, if necessary.

Stands like this are especially helpful on the off chance that you need to sand loads of little parts—for instance, in case you're making bunches of wooden toys. For motivation, look online for "belt sander stand photograph."

#portable belt sander reviews #best portable belt sander

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mojojomoto · 5 years ago

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT!

1. Declarative Assertion. Education is included in the bill of rights as a basic human right; ergo, no person should be deprived of education. On that note, we strongly believe that online classes should be temporarily suspended as we all face the pandemic that is looming in our country and other parts of the world. Conducting online classes as a substitute for traditional education only benefit privileged students, and education should be available and accessible to everyone, not just the affluent minority.

2. Definition. Online class/learning is defined as education conducted over the internet. It uses a system or platform which students utilize to view their course syllabus and track their progress. Commission on Higher Education placed it under distance education defined in the RA 10650 as a mode of learning in which students and teachers are physically separated from each other. It is student-centered, guided independent study, making use of well-studied teaching and learning pedagogies to deliver well-designed learning materials in various media. It is also sometimes described as flexible learning and distributed learning.

3. Description/Instances. This type of class is considered as a back-up plan if face-to-face classes are not attainable at a certain time. In fact, many universities had conducted successful blended classes in the past years, including De la Salle University and other top universities in the Philippines. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic being direly present, students see online classes as arduous to attend given the situation of many of them, and the requirements needed to conduct it. What students are advised to have include a stable internet connection, and a computer/laptop as means to access their online class accounts. Without these requirements, students will never be able to check their respective online class platforms and activities inside the comforts of their home.

4. Description. As the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) advised schools to shift on e-learning class or online classes as a precautionary measure while we are still facing this pandemic (COVID-19), majority of the students find this ineffective due to several reasons.

5. Instances. Online classes prevent students from learning, for not everyone has the financial, physical, and mental capacity to attend to their academic obligations in the middle of a pandemic. Students who live in a place with limited to completely no internet connection cannot comply to their course requirements whether they like it or not, because spending money to buy food and other necessities rather than load for mobile data is much more practical for everyone, most especially those families who are under financial crisis. Students without proper internet connection and/or gadgets are being left behind with their lessons and assessments. These are not their fault as everything that is happening is way beyond of their control.

6. Statistics. Student governments from Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, De La Salle University (DLSU) Manila, and University of Santo Tomas (UST) conducted a survey on the challenges faced by every student in managing online classes. A total of 2,340 teachers and students from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao responded to the survey, and the results are as follows: over 72% or 1,748 people agreed on the difficulty of understanding the lessons from online classes, 67% or 1,567 struggles due to their unstable internet connection, 64% struggles with large number of assessments, 43% were challenged with the strict guidelines such as attendance, and 22% lacks a computer or laptop to use in order to attend their respective course classes.

Based on the survey recently conducted by the College of Liberal Arts and Communication in De la Salle University-Dasmarinas, only 42% or 72 out of 170 students have a stable internet connection at home, while 51% struggles to use mobile data in accessing the school book meant for viewing lessons and finishing assessments, 3% and 4% of the respondents uses public Wi-Fi and internet cafes respectively.

7. Description. By now, students think that online classes and the assessments given were a mere requirement for students to pass, not its sole purpose of it, which is to learn and absorb the lessons handed down by their professors. This notion is supported by some professors and faculty members of various schools.

8. Testimonial. Jose Ramon Villarin, the president of Ateneo de Manila University, discerned the students’ difficulties in trying to conduct online classes, resulting to him handing down a memo to the Ateneans saying that the university will cancel its online classes in order to give leeway to students who are not able to access or have a hard time accessing the internet. As ADMU decided to cancel online classes, they also shortened the current semester and automatically pass all eligible students according to a letter released by Maria Luz C. Vilches, Ph.D., the Vice President for the Loyola Schools on 7th of April 2020. She also mentioned in the same letter that passing students is the “most humane way of dealing with student grades under the circumstances that we are in, where it is difficult and unfair to make a judgment of failure considering that students have not been given the benefit of a full semester to improve their performance.” Also taking into consideration that the country is under the Enhanced Community Quarantine which cuts the students’ resources to limited, however they are still encouraging the faculty to provide learning materials for students to study even on ECQ.

9. Testimonial. Aside from Ateneo de Manila University, Emmanuel A. Leyco, the University President of Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, suspended the whole university’s online activities last March 18, 2020 to let the students, as well as the teachers, give more importance and priority to their health. Online classes of PLM are suspended until further notice by the same office. After a month and the pandemic still going about, PLM announced last April 22, 2020, that all students, will receive a passing grade for every subject during the pandemic. They have clearly understood the needs of their students, as well as the necessary steps to undertake for these people to cope up with the pandemic without compromising their education.

10. Example. Twitter netizen Franz Berdida voiced out his and his friend’s struggles on going up and down a mountain just to get a signal in order to accomplish an output for their finals despite the lack of streetlights in the area on a gloomy evening. In addition to this, he also experienced climbing a coconut tree for the same reason—to get a signal. They mentioned that risking doing these things are better than getting a failed mark on their report card.

11. Example. Another netizen, Maria, called out the suspension of online classes due to their unstable internet connection. Apparently, she was answering a 50-item exam when their connection was suddenly disrupted for 20mins, taking away her chance of finishing her exam. When Maria raised her concern to her professor, she was slammed with a rude reply stating, “ano gusto mo gawin ko” (what am I supposed to do). These are just some of the common occurrences to students who face difficulties of having a stable internet, if there even is, or signal to use for data connection.

12. Instances. The problem bothers not just the students, but also the professors. Going out of their houses just to either upload a lesson or an assessment, or submit their work is a risk they are taking just so they could comply and do their job.

13. Description. Aside from the challenges of having a stable internet connection and a pc/laptop to use, one reason as to why online classes should be suspended is because of the mental health of the students. Being put in an academic pressure under the pandemic where lives are at stake can damage one’s mental health.

14. Instances. Students and their families, in the midst of the pandemic, try their very best to survive one day at a time. Problems brought about by the enhanced community quarantine is already enough for many of them to experience stress and anxiety due to the lack of work, funds, and more, but some schools really have no consideration over these and still remain adamant on the continuous initiation of online classes adding more burden to the families of students, especially the impoverished ones. Some of them would completely disregard either their mental health in order accomplish their tasks, or their assessments as a way to cut off some of the problems they carry.

15. Testimonial. As mentioned by the National Union of Students of the Philippines, “to add academic stress to the pile would only make for a burden even more difficult to bear.” Not having the right mental capacity can lead students to abrogate their assessments; if they ever do it, it would be for the sake of passing and not for learning. This destroys the purpose of being enrolled in a school. Just like what Doris Yates mentioned, “if students wanted online classes, they would have registered for them and not be in the brick and mortar buildings.”

16. Example. An anonymous student submitted an entry in The UDM Files on Facebook publishing a screenshot on a series of conversation he had with his classmate currently suffering depression because of his family’s situation, and the stress continuously given to him by the non-stop assessments being thrown at them. His mother and brother got the virus and was sent in the hospital, while he stays at home, self-quarantining his self as he is considered as a person under monitoring during the time when the post was published. He’s been going through a lot, yet he cannot take a break from online classes as it is still required in their school.

17. Example. Jay, a netizen, also expressed her feelings online towards her worsening mental health due to everything that is happening in her life, including their online classes. Based on her post, she had been stuck in an “abusive household” for two months now, and her mental health is “seriously deteriorating” at this point.

Jay and this anonymous student’s story prove how online classes could be really detrimental to the mental health of students who are in extreme situations.

18. Restatement. Online classes would have been a good alternative to traditional education if everyone has the same socioeconomic status, however, this is only a dream we could hope for. The sad reality is that there are many students who go through distinct obstacles which challenges their capability to join online classes and accomplish their assessments. We stand for the suspension of online classes. Education should be inclusive to everyone.

REFERENCES

Ang, R. (2020). Student Announcements. Memo on Online Classes. Retrieved from http://gsb.ateneo.edu/student-announcements/memo-on-online-classes/

Bagayas, S. (2020). Students urge suspension of online classes during coronavirus lockdown. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/nation/255504-students-urge-suspension-online-classes-coronavirus-lockdown

Bagayas, S. (2020). Students of top 4 PH schools urge CHED to suspend online classes. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/nation/255852-students-top-schools-philippines-call-ched-suspend-online-classes-coronavirus-outbreak

OVPPA. (2020). All online classes, academic activities suspended until further notice. Retrieved from https://www.plm.edu.ph/news/announcements/all-online-classes-academic-activities-suspended-until-further-notice-2.

PLM. (2020). PLM to pass all students amid COVID-19 crisis. Retrieved from https://www.plm.edu.ph/news/announcements/plm-to-pass-all-students-amid-covid-19-crisis.

Unlisted. (2020). CHED tells universities to 'be lenient, help students' as classes shift online. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/03/17/2001653/ched-tells-universities-be-lenient-help-students-classes-shift-online

Top Hat. (n.d.) Online Class Definition and Meaning. Retrieved from https://tophat.com/glossary/o/online-class/

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucuses, Strengthening His Primary Lead https://nyti.ms/2HJdnAW

This is not just a presidential election, it is a referendum of Corporations vs. People. I vote for the People. Sanders is the opposite side of the same coin(Trump). MY GREATEST FEAR IS THE RE-ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP.

Also if there's going to be a REVOLUTION, we MUST FLIP the SENATE otherwise nothing CHANGES.

#VoteBlueNoMatterWho

Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada Caucuses, Strengthening His Primary Lead

His triumph will provide a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the Democratic Party to slow his march to the nomination.

By Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns | Published Feb. 22, 2020 Updated Feb. 23, 2020, 1:34 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted Feb 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — Senator Bernie Sanders claimed a major victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday that demonstrated his broad appeal in the first racially diverse state in the presidential primary race and established him as the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

In a significant show of force, Mr. Sanders, a liberal from Vermont, had a lead that was more than double his nearest rivals with 50 percent of the precincts reporting, and The Associated Press named him the winner on Saturday evening.

His triumph in Nevada, after strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, will propel him into next Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday contests immediately thereafter, with a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the party to slow his march.

Mr. Sanders, speaking to jubilant supporters in San Antonio, trumpeted what early results suggested would be a landslide victory.

“We have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition, which is not only going to win in Nevada it’s going to sweep the country,” he said, predicting another victory in Texas next month.

[ NEWS ANALYSIS: How Bernie Sanders dominated in Nevada. SEE BELOW]

While Mr. Sanders boasted that “no campaign has a grass-roots movement like we do,” and was bathed in “Bernie, Bernie!” chants, he otherwise ignored his Democratic opponents.

Mr. Sanders’s success, and the continued uncertainty over who his strongest would-be rival is, makes it less clear than ever how centrist forces in the party can organize themselves for a potentially monthslong nomination fight. The moderate wing is still grappling with an unusually crowded field for this late in the race, the lack of an obvious single alternative to Mr. Sanders and no sign that any of those vying for that role will soon drop out to hasten a coalescence.

As results were being counted on Saturday night, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the billionaire investor Tom Steyer and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota were all competing for what would clearly be a distant second-place finish.

With the full order of finish still in doubt, Mr. Buttigieg used his caucus-night speech to deliver a stern warning about the implications of nominating Mr. Sanders, urging Democrats not to “rush” into anointing him as their candidate. In his most pointed critique to date, Mr. Buttigieg said Mr. Sanders’s agenda lacked broad support and asserted that the senator did not give “a damn” about the swing-state Democrats in Congress who are scared of running with him on the same ticket.

“Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans,” Mr. Buttigieg said, adding that Mr. Sanders wanted to “reorder the economy in ways most Democrats, not to mention most Americans, don’t support.”

Mr. Biden appeared at a Las Vegas union hall while most votes were still uncounted to claim a comeback and vowed victory in South Carolina. “Y’all did it for me,” he told supporters, trying out a new line aimed at his rivals. “I ain’t a socialist, I ain’t a plutocrat, I’m a Democrat.”

Mr. Biden’s campaign asserted that he would finish in second place here, a claim challenged by Mr. Buttigieg’s aides.

The apparent scale of Mr. Sanders’s victory margin presented an immediate challenge to the rest of the candidates, many of whom had been counting on a drawn-out nomination fight to give them time to catch up. But time is plainly running short, and few of Mr. Sanders’s rivals have a clear path to closing his advantage. Among them, only Mr. Biden has a realistic chance of winning South Carolina next week, the sole remaining contest before Super Tuesday on March 3.

That may leave the other Nevada runners-up scrambling to accumulate delegates but with few opportunities to win whole states. Several candidates who were counting on a wave of national momentum coming out of the early states showed no sign of achieving that: Ms. Klobuchar, who claimed a third-place finish in New Hampshire as a major breakthrough, appeared to be near the back of the pack in Nevada. Mr. Buttigieg, who nearly deadlocked Mr. Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire, did not come close to him on Saturday.

Should Mr. Biden prevail in South Carolina — an outcome that is no longer seen as a near-certainty — there could be enormous pressure on the other moderates in the race to stand down and give him a clean shot at Mr. Sanders.

Ms. Warren, meanwhile, did not appear to have received a significant bump in Nevada after a debate on Wednesday that was widely seen as her strongest of the campaign. The impact of her dramatic confrontation with the billionaire candidate Michael R. Bloomberg may have been muted here, because so many early votes were cast before it. She now faces the ungainly challenge of seeking to capitalize on the energy of that debate without having triumphed, or even fared especially well, in the contest immediately following it.

At a large rally in Seattle on Saturday, Ms. Warren declared there were “a lot of states to go, and right now I can feel the momentum.” Declining to follow other Democrats in taking aim at Mr. Sanders, she continued deriding Mr. Bloomberg and his self-funded candidacy.

The fragmentation of the vote among the other candidates, not only in Nevada but in the coming primaries, is likely to strengthen Mr. Sanders. After the split decision in Iowa, where he shared the lead with Mr. Buttigieg, and a modest victory in New Hampshire, he appeared to prove his ability to win convincingly in a more diverse state, an outcome that often eluded him in his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination.

With its mix of Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American voters, Nevada offered Mr. Sanders a rejoinder to critics who claim he cannot broaden his appeal beyond his base of white liberals.

Mr. Sanders’s steady progress in the primary contest has come amid widespread grumbling and occasional howls of alarm from the Democratic establishment, which views Mr. Sanders — a 78-year-old democratic socialist who has never joined the party — and his movement with a combination of fear and distrust. The anxiety deepened this weekend in the aftermath of reports that government intelligence officials believe the Russian government is aiding his candidacy, and after Mr. Sanders acknowledged that he was briefed on the Russians’ apparent intervention a month ago.

Yet his coalition in Nevada — where 35 percent of the voters were not white, according to entrance polls — bodes well for his prospects in the 15 states and territories that will vote on the most important day of the race in just over a week. The Super Tuesday contests include large, diverse states such as California, Colorado and Texas, and the delegate lode is so hefty that if Mr. Sanders performs well, it will be difficult for one of his rivals to catch up given the unflagging dedication of his supporters.

Making that task more difficult is that the more moderate candidates continue to split votes and, more important, they all seem determined to forge ahead either by using their own fortunes or by raising enough money from donations to proceed. That was evident on Saturday, as candidates like Ms. Warren, Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar, as well as Mr. Sanders, traveled to rallies in states that will cast ballots soon.

Further complicating matters for those hoping to stop Mr. Sanders is the diminished standing of Mr. Bloomberg, the candidate some moderates hope can defeat Mr. Sanders. Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is reeling after a poor debate performance here, and some who were counting on him to become the moderate standard-bearer have been left to wonder whether he has what it takes.

Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, warned in a statement on Saturday that “the Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead.” He added that nominating Mr. Sanders would be a “fatal error.”

Even as many of the candidates left the state on Saturday, Nevada retained the political spotlight as the caucuses appeared to run relatively smoothly after the debacle in Iowa this month.

Democrats in this state made drastic changes to their own caucus procedures after Iowa, scrapping the software they had been planning to use and intensively training thousands of people to pre-empt problems. There were scattered reports of volunteer shortfalls at some precincts, though not on a scale that seemed to alter the contest in any appreciable way, and some precincts had problems getting through on the telephone hotline to report caucus results, prompting the state party to add phone lines.

More revealing than the caucus process was who voted — and the coalition that Mr. Sanders built in a state that derailed his then-promising candidacy four years ago.

He performed well across a range of voters, winning men and women, union members and nonunion workers, and those who attended college and those who did not, according to entrance polls of caucusgoers.

Mr. Sanders not only won among self-described liberal voters, but also made inroads with moderates for the first time. Among self-described moderate or conservative caucusgoers, Mr. Sanders was the top vote-getter, albeit narrowly: He captured 25 percent of such voters, while Mr. Biden won 23 percent, according to entrance polls.

That was in part because many black and Hispanic voters described themselves as moderates, and because Mr. Sanders outpaced the field with Hispanics, taking 53 percent, and was second only to Mr. Biden among African-Americans. Mr. Biden captured 36 percent of black voters, while Mr. Sanders won 27 percent, the entrance polls showed.

Mr. Sanders made less progress with older voters, whom he has repeatedly struggled with, but claimed new evidence that his calls for “a political revolution” were motivating new voters. He won an extraordinary 66 percent of voters under 30, and dominated among the broader universe of voters who said they were attending their first caucuses, a demographic that made up just over half of the electorate.

Mr. Sanders’s performance will echo beyond Nevada and surely focus the minds of his rivals.

Asked before the results were announced how he would slow Mr. Sanders’s march should the Vermont senator triumph here, Mr. Biden, stopping at a caucus site in North Las Vegas, said: “I beat him by going to — just moving on. People want to know who’s the most likely to beat Donald Trump.”

Mr. Biden emphasized the importance of keeping the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and taking back seats in the Republican-controlled Senate, and noted that he had raised “over a million bucks” since the debate on Wednesday.

Ms. Warren has raised considerably more than that since her standout performance, and on Saturday her campaign said it had taken in $21 million so far this month — a huge sum by any standard, and one likely to allow her to compete seriously at least through Super Tuesday. Her campaign manager, Roger Lau, said on Saturday that he believed the debate would ultimately “have more impact on the structure of the race than the Nevada result.”

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Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.

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"I believe the Democratic party elites are underestimating the discontent with the moderate, centrist status quo. I think a huge slice of the electorate wants radical change, just as they did four years ago." CHARLES, ARIZONA

"Why is it so difficult for people (particularly the media) to believe that some of us actually like, support, and believe in Bernie? Am I some extreme left wing liberal? No. I'm a middle class, single, 40-something educated female that happens to believe our country has enough imagination left in itself that we can invest in education, the environment, health care, and equality. Do I believe Bernie can accomplish everything he promises? No, but I'm okay with that. He is fostering a vision of hope, and if he even accomplishes one-tenth of that vision, we'll be far better off than the current path we're on. Unfortunately the alternative democratic candidates (the "safe bets") do no inspire the same level of hope in our future."MOMO, COLORADO

"Hundreds of million of US voters are fed up with the unfairness built in to our political system and our economy. They are tired of financial manipulation, health insurance profiteering, military waste, high cost of education, and low wages. These people know that talk of a really great economy is blather because they know their own financial situations and how many hours they have to work to squeak by. And they know how close to the edge they are because they see friends and neighbors falling into bankruptcy. The difference now is that they are getting organized through the Sanders campaign structure. They are talking to relatives, friends, and acquaintances. This face-to-face organizing has more power than TV ads, political talking heads, or social media."

CHARLIE COOP, BALTIMORE

" NY Times,,,you just don't get it. You don't understand what it mean to have a $30 prescription jump to $1,000 per month! You don't understand what it means to have the purchasing power of your pension decline by 33%. Its all good for you. But for the rest of us.....we are DROWNING!!!!!!!!!!!" ANN, DENVER CO

"Sanders is genuine, dedicated, and has amazing grass roots support; but I like my health insurance, my 401k balance, my job, low taxes, and I am just about 4,000 dollars away from paying for my own college and have saved considerable amounts for my children's education. No way am I going to give that up and pay for someone else's college too - so hello to four more years of Trump." RONAN IS COMING FOR YOU, LOS ANGELES

"If you listened to Sanders Nevada victory speech, he covered it all, what he is for. It's a sea change from where we are, but we have gone so far off the rails; we are so out of balance. Corporations and GOP hollowed out corrupt government have forgotten the people who buy their goods and pay taxes. It's become all about their profits and their power. Sanders comes along as the Un-Trump at this moment and the fear-mongering gets louder. Not once did Sanders mention socialism last night. Nor was that was he was talking about. The work is to rebalance this country for the people, not to eliminate capitalism. The work is to save the planet. "We are in this together" he said ( not us vs. them,"America first"). If Sanders becomes president and spends his first 100 days undoing Trump's destruction via executive orders and hiring and firing, that will be momentous. The rest will of course be a push. I'm with him." POTTER, MA

"Trump or Sanders. Trump or Sanders. One wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. The other wants to take from the poor and give to the rich. Do we have third party candidates yet. Are there any." VINCENT PAPA,

BOCA RATON FL

"As a two-time voter for President Obama, I will proudly vote for Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders in the November election. I will also vote for Warren if it is her. Otherwise I will vote Green. My one issue is non-profit, universal healthcare. God Bless Bernie."

OBSERVER, WASHINGTON DC

"It's becoming quite confusing trying to understand all these voices saying "Bernie can't win" when the election results are showing that not only can Bernie win, but he's killing it in the field -- across age, race, income bracket, gender. What in the world is motivating all these people to say "Bernie can't win?" The data shows otherwise: 54% of the democratic vote in Nevada means Bernie is heading towards the nomination. The only people who are going to lose big time here are the old stick in the mud party centrists, who are on the way out to irrelevance. We are watching in real time, over half a dozen election cycles, the Democratic Party being taken over by the progressives. It doesn't matter if Bernie is elected in 2020 or not. The progressive movement is here to stay. If not Bernie in 2020 as president, then likely Elizabeth Warren in 2024. I don't see how any facts on the ground can change this. I'm registering young, first time voters in Pennsylvania. They're all going Bernie. If everyone who said "Bernie can't win" will just register one young voter, we will crush Trump in the national." KIP LEITNER, PHILADELPHIA

"This is the story of NOT ME, US. By building a diverse coalition based around policies to help the working class and poor, Sanders has tapped a segment of voters long overlooked by the Democratic Party. As we get closer to Super Tuesday it looks more likely Sanders will come out on top. There is no situation where the moderate candidates can come out on top through their own merits. The Democratic Party is finally being realigned to the working class coalition that propelled FDR to the White House and ushered in a new era in America."

COMMENTER, NORTHEAST

"Why did he win? Because Bernie is the OG. I supported him early in 2016 but voted for Hillary in the VA primary because I thought the only way to beat the GOP was with a safe centrist. We all see how that worked out. Bernie 2020!"

NATHAN HANSFORD, BUCHANAN VA

"Bernie is like a former PM we had in Aus. He tried for years to become PM, his party was out of power for decades as our version of the GOP ruled and then something miraculous happened, the unthinkable, the NO WAY!! I don't believe it happened. He won and our very first social democrat won and we got universal healthcare, we got free college education, we got Family Law Courts, we got laws for our indigenous population, we got environmental laws, the list is very long of the things that happened and were changed. Over the decades since that win in 1972 the Aus version of GOP and the Aus version of the DNC have slowly eaten into some of these reforms but some of them like our Medicare and our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that is recognised around the world as one of the best(we subsidise the prescription drugs your doctor gives to you) remain and they are sacrosanct now, no government would ever tamper with them. So Americans...if Bernie wins the nomination don't be afraid but get out there and vote Blue and usher in a new era, a new broom and send Trump to the dustbin of history." LEE H, AUSTRALIA

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How Bernie Sanders Dominated in Nevada

A multiracial coalition brought the senator’s long-promised political revolution to vivid life, for perhaps the first time in the 2020 race.

By Jennifer Medina and Astead W. Herndon | Published Feb. 22, 2020 | New York Times | Posted Feb 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — They showed up to Desert Pines High School in Tío Bernie T-shirts to caucus on Saturday morning, motivated by the idea of free college tuition, “Medicare for all” and the man making those promises: a 78-year-old white senator from Vermont. To dozens of mostly working-class Latinos, Bernie Sanders seemed like one of their own, a child of immigrants who understands what it means to be seen as a perpetual outsider.

For at least one day, in one state, the long-promised political revolution of Mr. Sanders came to vivid life, a multiracial coalition of immigrants, college students, Latina mothers, younger black voters, white liberals and even some moderates who embraced his idea of radical change and lifted him to victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday.

By harnessing such a broad cross-section of voters, Mr. Sanders offered a preview of the path that he hopes to take to the Democratic presidential nomination: uniting an array of voting blocs in racially diverse states in the West and the South and in economically strapped parts of the Midwest and the Southwest, all behind the message of social and economic justice that he has preached for years.

His advisers argue that he has a singular ability to energize voters who have felt secondary in the Democratic Party, like Latinos and younger people, and that Nevada proved as much — and could set the stage for strong performances in the Super Tuesday contests on March 3. The Sanders campaign is looking in particular to the delegate-rich states of California and Texas, whose diverse Democratic electorates include a high percentage of voters from immigrant backgrounds.

Mr. Sanders’s chances also depend in part on the field of moderate candidates remaining crowded and divided, which is not a guarantee, especially if voters seeking an alternative to the right of Mr. Sanders align behind one candidate. To earn enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee, Mr. Sanders will also have to win big in other large states, including California and Texas, where his coalition remains untested. And his brand of democratic socialism could prove to be a hard sell, including among Latinos elsewhere in the country.

Mr. Sanders delivered his victory speech Saturday evening not in Nevada, but in Texas, one of the diverse powerhouses on the Super Tuesday calendar.

“They think they are going to win this election by dividing our people up based on the color of their skin or where they were born or their religion or their sexual orientation,” he said in San Antonio, speaking of President Trump and his allies. “We are going to win because we are doing exactly the opposite, we’re bringing our people together.”

In the entrance polls on Saturday, Mr. Sanders led the field across many demographic groups: men and women, whites and Latinos, union and nonunion households, and across education levels.

The breadth of his appeal amounts to a warning shot at those in the moderate Democratic establishment he often rails against, many of whom have staked their hopes for a “Stop Sanders” effort on the idea that he has a political ceiling within the party and could not grow his base of supporters.

Instead, as the primary shifted to Nevada from the racially homogeneous electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire, it was Mr. Sanders who grew more formidable, while other candidates have struggled.

Strong showings in the first two states have not significantly helped former Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar break through with nonwhite voters. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has called himself the one candidate who can build a diverse coalition, but he finished in second place in Nevada, the most diverse nominating contest so far.

Only Mr. Sanders, with his uncompromising message that working-class Americans affected by injustice can unite across ethnic identity, has shown traction in both predominantly white Iowa and New Hampshire and the more black and brown Nevada.

“He’s been saying the same thing for 40 years — I trust him,” said Cristhian Ramirez, a 31-year-old technology support specialist who began volunteering for the Sanders campaign in November. Mr. Ramirez brought several friends with him Saturday and scoffed at the idea that Mr. Sanders would face challenges in the general election. Like many supporters, Mr. Ramirez was first drawn to Mr. Sanders during the senator’s 2016 presidential bid. “Why should we vote for a moderate? We already tried that last time and we lost.”

The strong showing in the first-in-the-West caucus state seemed to be a payoff for Mr. Sanders’s unique political philosophy and his campaign team’s electoral strategy, which bet big on grass-roots outreach to Latinos and immigrant populations. It’s a model the campaign is looking to take across the country, working to reach people across racial and ethnic groups who have traditionally been less likely to vote.

“We’ve been saying for a while, candidates and the Democratic Party need to engage Latino communities sooner and substantively,” said Marisa Franco, the executive director of Mijente, a community organization that has backed Mr. Sanders. “If you do that, they respond accordingly.”

While ideologically liberal voters and young people powered Mr. Sanders toward popular vote victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada showed the candidate’s brand of authenticity could have cross-cultural appeal, even as the campaign sparred over “Medicare for all” with the culinary workers’ union, the state’s largest union and one of the most powerful organizations in Nevada Democratic politics.

Activists and leaders who have endorsed Mr. Sanders, particularly people who work with immigrant populations, argue that a focus on “Bernie Bros” — a caricature of his supporters as predominantly white and male — misses the scope of the campaign’s outreach to historically marginalized groups.

They praised Mr. Sanders for articulating a global frame of injustice that has led him to uncharted places among the Democratic field: He was the first to support a moratorium on deportations, has consistently spoken of the plight of the Palestinian people during debates, and has talked about his own family’s immigrant experience as a way to connect with voters, something he rarely did during his 2016 run.

No demographic is a monolith, of course, and Mr. Sanders’s support comes with fissures along fault lines of age and educational attainment. But, if Nevada is any measure, he is well positioned to galvanize a cross-section of Latino voters in a way that earlier candidates have done with black voters in the Democratic Party, amassing an advantage that could help create a path to the nomination.

“If you have focused intention and ongoing support for Latinos and other voters of color you can win,” said Sonja Diaz, the executive director of the Latino Policy & Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles. “They did not take the Latino vote for granted.”

When early voting began last week, the Sanders campaign sent a neon truck blasting local Spanish radio out onto the Las Vegas streets, urging people to show up at dozens of early caucus sites. They attracted hundreds of people to a soccer tournament, then offered rides to caucus sites to anyone who showed up.

After months of knocking on doors in largely Latino neighborhoods in Las Vegas, on Saturday morning, the Sanders campaign said it sent text messages and phone calls to every Latino registered as a Democrat or independent in the state.

For months, the Sanders campaign has boasted that it was the first to organize and advertise in largely Latino neighborhoods, not just in Las Vegas, but in Des Moines and east Los Angeles. Many people who showed up at the caucuses wearing Sanders buttons and stickers said his campaign was the only one they ever heard from. Latino political activists — including those backing other candidates — routinely applaud the Sanders campaign for doing the kind of expensive, labor intensive outreach they have been trying to convince other candidates to do for years.

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has virtually unlimited resources, is also investing in Latino outreach and competing aggressively in Super Tuesday states, which could cut into support for Mr. Sanders. He has already spent more than $10 million on Spanish-language advertising.

Mr. Sanders’s appeal seems particularly strong in the West, where his ability to harness not just Latinos, but also liberal black and Asian-American voters could portend a strong showing in California, which will award more delegates than the four early voting states combined.

The Sanders team has long said that California, where early voting is already underway, is a cornerstone of its campaign. It has invested roughly $6.5 million in advertising there so far, including more than $1 million for Spanish language advertising. A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California released last week showed Mr. Sanders with 30 percent of the vote, and Mr. Biden in second, trailing by nearly 20 percentage points.

The support for Mr. Sanders in Nevada was particularly notable given the intense fight with the Culinary Union, which represents 60,000 housekeepers, bartenders, cooks and others who work in casinos here. Leadership for the union, whose membership is more than 50 percent Latino, declined to back any one candidate, but spent the weeks leading up to the caucus criticizing Mr. Sanders’s “Medicare for all” plan, because it would effectively eliminate the union’s prized private health insurance.

But in interviews in recent days, many rank-and-file union members said they supported Mr. Sanders precisely because of his health care proposal, explaining that they wanted their friends and relatives to have the same kind of access to care that they have.

On Saturday, Mr. Sanders won at five of the seven caucus sites on the Strip, losing one to Mr. Biden and tying with him at another — a clear sign that the messages from union leadership had largely been ignored.

Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of Center for Popular Democracy, a national collective of progressive groups, said she heard all day about people voting for the first time. She also said that she expected states like California and Texas could turn out even better.

At a recent event in Las Vegas geared toward Latino voters, Ms. Archila said she asked the audience to “close your eyes and imagine a country where we are not a target,” citing Mr. Sanders’s support for a moratorium on deportations.

“People started to cry,” she said. “We have never known what it feels like to be in this country and not be under threat.”

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Jennifer Medina reported from Las Vegas and Astead W. Herndon from Charleston, S.C. Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting from Minneapolis.

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5 Takeaways From the Nevada Caucuses (The Big One: Sanders Takes Control)

Mr. Sanders has now won the most votes in each of the first three states and has more momentum than all his rivals and more money than everyone besides two self-funding billionaires.

By Shane Goldmacher | Published Feb. 23, 2020 Updated 8:41 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — Senator Bernie Sanders won big on Saturday and is now the clear front-runner. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. saved enough face to march on to his must-win in South Carolina a week from now. Pete Buttigieg finished in the top tier again and embraced the urgency of knocking down a rising Mr. Sanders, though it is not clear where he wins next. And Senator Elizabeth Warren is awash in cash after her debate dismantling of Michael R. Bloomberg — $9 million in three days — but the performance did not nudge her up in the standings in Nevada.

Here are five takeaways of what Saturday’s results mean for the rest of the Democratic primary:

BERNIE SANDERS HAS TAKEN COMMAND OF THE RACE

Mr. Sanders did not just win Nevada. Entrance polls show that he dominated.

Those polls showed Mr. Sanders winning men and women; whites and Latinos; voters in all but the oldest age group (17-29, 30-44 and 45-64); those with college degrees and those without. He was carrying union households and nonunion households, self-identified liberal Democrats (by a wide margin) and moderate and conservative ones (narrowly).

“Welcome to the revolution,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman for Justice Democrats, a progressive group.

The Sanders victory was built upon three distinct and yet overlapping bases of support: young people (56 percent support among those 44 and under), very liberal voters (49 percent) and a majority of Hispanic voters. The latter was a new factor in Nevada after two heavily white opening states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and particularly important as the race expands to big and diverse states on Super Tuesday with large Latino populations, none more significant than California and Texas.

Mr. Sanders has now won the most votes in each of the first three states (Mr. Buttigieg appears to have edged him in delegates in the still-disputed Iowa results) and has more momentum than all his rivals and more money than everyone besides the two self-funding billionaires, Tom Steyer and Mr. Bloomberg.

It was no accident that Mr. Sanders spent much of the day before the Nevada caucuses in California and had two rallies in Texas on Saturday: He campaign is looking ahead to Super Tuesday March 3 as the day he breaks away from the rest of the Democratic field.

Speaking of which …

THE REST OF THE FIELD ISN’T SHRINKING

Not long after the first results began rolling in, a super PAC supporting Mr. Buttigieg announced it was buying TV ads on Super Tuesday states. Mr. Biden’s campaign manager declared that “the Biden comeback” had just begun. Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped from her New Hampshire showing yet claimed to have “exceeded expectations.” And Ms. Warren’s campaign manager said her performance at last week’s debate would prove more important than the actual election.

Translation: No one is about to quit this race.

And the longer all the alternative candidates remain, the longer Mr. Sanders can keep carrying states and consolidating his own coalition without a singular rival.

“The Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead,” said Kevin Sheekey, the campaign manager for Mr. Bloomberg.

Each has their own arguments for staying.

Mr. Biden, who carried black voters in Nevada, is the best positioned to beat Mr. Sanders in an upcoming state (South Carolina). Mr. Buttigieg has had the strongest showings overall besides Mr. Sanders. Ms. Warren, whose campaign announced a $21 million haul for February, argues she has the money and organization to compete. Mr. Bloomberg has his billions. Ms. Klobuchar’s path — which is taking her to Fargo, North Dakota, on Sunday — seems less clear and may be more about grabbing spare delegates than the nomination.

The collective impact is clear. A remarkable six candidates all had at least 12 percent of the vote among voters over 45 in Nevada, an almost impossibly even level of fracture.

JOE BIDEN’S BEST FINISH YET IS STILL SECOND PLACE

The Biden case for the nomination has been straightforward: He’s the guy to beat President Trump. Yet for the third time in three races, Mr. Biden did not win. He did improve from his bad fourth-place finish in Iowa and his disastrous fifth place in New Hampshire (as of late Saturday both Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Biden were claiming second as Nevada sloooowly processed results).

But throughout February, Mr. Biden had said that his fortunes would be reversed now that more diverse states were voting. Except it was Mr. Sanders who soundly defeated Mr. Biden among Latino voters, according to entrance polls, while Mr. Biden’s lead among African Americans — his strongest base — continued to shrink to 12 percentage points.

“Y’all did it for me. Y’all did it,” Mr. Biden nonetheless told his supporter in Las Vegas.

He notably sharpened his contrast with Mr. Sanders and Mr. Bloomberg, who has vied to take over the moderate lane the former vice president occupied for virtually all of 2019.

“I ain’t a socialist. I ain’t a plutocrat. I’m a Democrat,” he said. “And proud of it!”

Mr. Biden could well still win in South Carolina where he has consistently led in the polls, and that could be a springboard to Super Tuesday. But his schedule has him locked down in the must-win state for much of the week as rivals cross the nation.

And don’t forget: Mr. Biden led in the Nevada polling averages for much of the last year.

Until he didn’t.

BUTTIGIEG WANTS TO BE THE ANTI-BERNIE

Of all the victory and concession speeches on Saturday, Mr. Buttigieg’s was the most revealing. He used the big platform not just to make the case for himself but to slash at Mr. Sanders, whom he accused of pushing an “inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans.”

He talked about the urgency of beating Mr. Trump and the importance of nominating a Democrat who “actually gives a damn” about down-ballot races. Speaking on MSNBC, one of the campaign’s national chairs, Representative Anthony Brown, called Mr. Buttigieg the leader in the “non-revolutionary lane” of the primary, though the extent to which such a lane exists, it is more a tangled mess.

Going forward, the problem is that all of Mr. Buttigieg’s early successes in Iowa, New Hampshire and, to a lesser extent, Nevada has not yet lifted him nationally.

Among black voters, the Nevada entrance polls had him carrying a meager 2 percent. Advisers to his rivals and Democratic strategists who want to see Mr. Sanders stopped have been frustrated with Mr. Buttigieg’s campaign, arguing that while he has been relatively successful so far, he is now in a demographic cul-de-sac.

But Mr. Buttigieg has a compelling counterpoint, as he said pointedly in his speech: “Ours is the only campaign that has beaten Senator Sanders anywhere in the country this whole campaign cycle.”

AFTER SIZZLING DEBATE, Warren doesn’t GET NEVADA BUMP

If Wednesday’s debate performance was going to turn Ms. Warren’s political fortunes, it did not do so fast enough for the Nevada caucuses.

The results trickling in delivered another round of frustration for a candidate who fell below expectations in both Iowa and New Hampshire and had her campaign manager, Roger Lau, arguing on Saturday that the days-old debate would prove more significant than the actual election.

“We believe the Nevada debate will have more impact on the structure of the race,” Mr. Lau wrote on Twitter. He called the actual results a “lagging indicator” because so many votes — true — were cast before the debate.

The problem is that election results create their own new gravitational reality in politics and the race itself will be reset with the next debate on Tuesday. Then comes South Carolina, which was long seen as her weakest of the four early states. Then, suddenly, Super Tuesday, where Mr. Sanders seems to be making a play for Ms. Warren’s home state of Massachusetts.

Ms. Warren still has fans. Before one of the largest crowds of her campaign in Seattle on Saturday, she told supporters that she had raised $9 million in the last three days, a huge sum. That gives a financial cushion to a campaign that was so close to running out of money in January it took out a $3 million line of credit.

But on a day that Mr. Sanders won and was building momentum, Ms. Warren was still focused on her preferred target: Mr. Bloomberg, reliving some of the greatest hits from the debate.

And she added some new, off-brand material for a candidate who rose in the polls last year on the strength of her myriad plans and reputation as a wonkish fighter.

She cracked a height joke.

Mr. Bloomberg, she said, posed “a big threat, not a tall threat, but a big one.”

Her rivals had not even mentioned her in their assessments.

*********

#trump scandals #trumpism #trump administration #president donald trump #against trump #news today trump #2020 candidates #2020 election #2020 presidential election #democratic party #democracy #democrats #nevada caucuses #bernie sanders #bernie sander for president #bernie 2020

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orokinarchives · 6 years ago

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A Favour for Darvo

(A Favour for Darvo banner)

27 November 2013 – 29 November 2013

Prelude

In September, Darvo issued a series of day-long Darvo Deals. At the time, Darvo was not a constant fixture to the Tenno, as the Relays where he sets up shop had not been built yet. Accordingly, Darvo Deals tended to be notable and rare.

19 September:

Hey, Tenno – you interested in a deal? I've got a few you can't refuse. I have recently come into possession of some valuable wares, fit for Tenno. Certain 'unfriendly individuals' would dearly like to have it back, so I must liberate stock quickly. I believe we can both benefit from my predicament.

Today I can offer you a Stealth Pack at 25% less than my competitors – the best gear for eliminating your enemies silently. It includes the PARIS compound hunting bow, lethal KUNAI throwing daggers and the deadly multi-bladed GLAIVE.

I will have more items available in the coming days. Be sure to check back often; I can only offer them for a limited time.

—Darvo

20 September:

Tenno… if you missed my deal yesterday, don't worry about it. Here's a new one that may pique your interest. Want to enter the most sought-after place this side of the solar system? Here's your chance.

I have an abundance of Void Keys I need to unload fast, so they're 25% less than what my competitors offer. Five Void Keys – including one guaranteed Rare Key – will grant you access to secret missions outside the realms of normal space. Here you'll be able to run missions and find the rarest, most amazing materials and blueprints known to Tenno.

I can't hold on to this valuable cargo for long, so this deal is only available for a limited time. Chop, chop, Tenno.

—Darvo

21 September:

So, I have a situation where I have access to a large stock of warframes. Don't worry, totally legitimate sources.

I've heard my competitors are planning on offering a new Ultimate Warframe pack. I'm willing to offer you this pack before they even release it AND at a 25% discount from their proposed price. How about Mag, Nova, Frost, Rhino, Trinity, Ember, Ash, Excalibur, Banshee, Loki, Saryn, Nyx, Volt and Vauban? Sound good? Fourteen warframes in all. This should surely keep you fighting for some time.

My competitors are starting to catch on to my trade business and don't appreciate my deals as much as you do. So get this deal in the Market before it's too late.

—Darvo

25 September:

I have a very rare opportunity for you Tenno. Perhaps you have heard of Dread, Despair and Hate? You know, the signature stealth weapons of a certain elusive assassin? An assassin whose attentions may now be turned my way. My competitors I can handle, but this guy… this guy is serious. I would rather not find out how effective these weapons are first-hand.

You can have the pack at 25% off. I really need to get rid of this stock. Then I need to do my own disappearing act and put Darvo's Deals on hiatus. You understand, right?

It's been a pleasure doing business with you, Tenno. See you when I see you, if I see you.

—Darvo

After this latest Darvo Deal, where he sold the Stalker's weaponry, Darvo disappeared for some time, briefly surfacing a couple weeks later.

15 November:

Vaults are good hiding spots. They're hard to find and even harder to get into. Believe me, I know – it's the reason I still have all my fingers.

Tenno, what if I told you I've been able to collect a wide assortment of vault keys? Dangerous vaults, too hairy for a simple merchant like myself. But someone of your talents? You might appreciate what's inside.

See… I'm reopening my business, but before I can show my face again, I need to pay off some old debts. You understand, right? You won't find my Vault Pack anywhere else, and the price is crazy low. What do you say, for old times' sake?

—Darvo

Alert

On Wednesday (27 November 2013), the alert became available and was present for two days. The Tenno received an inbox message from Darvo.

Inbox message: Just a Small Favour?

My friends,

I have a small favour to ask of you. No, no, favour is the wrong word. You don't get paid for favours, but for this I can pay you. Not in advance, of course, but when you are done there will be plenty to go around. Hell, once this is done, I'll be able to offer you my deals again.

Let me get to the point. There's a ship. A ship I own but am not currently in possession of. All you need to do is sneak onto this ship and take care of something for me. Nothing major. I know you can handle the work. I'll explain when you're on board.

What do you say, will you help your old friend Darvo out?

Oh and by the way, I'd appreciate it if you keep this between you and me. There is no reason for the Lotus to know about this little arrangement.

—Darvo

Mission

The alert was a Mobile Defence mission on Janus, Saturn, using the Corpus Ship tileset, with normal Corpus enemies. There were three Mobile Defence terminals. Unlike most missions, Darvo himself serves as the mission control, instead of Ordis or the Lotus.

Darvo: "Here we go. Are you ready? I'm ready. Take that datamass and drop it into the system. I'll be able to hack into the ship remotely once you do. Should be easy. You'll find what I need in no time."

Darvo: "Just so you know, I'm a bit new to this whole guide thing, so it's not going to be like the Lotus. Don't worry; everything will be just fine."

(when nearing the first terminal) Darvo: "I think you're near a terminal. Yes, yes you are. Drop me in and I'll get to work."

Darvo: "You're close; drop me in."

(halfway through the first hack) Darvo: "Just making a few more adjustments. Nothing strange going on down there? Just Corpus defences? Nothing… else?"

(after hacking the first terminal) Darvo: "That's it. Hmm… I didn't find what I needed. Go to the next terminal. It should be there. I think."

(halfway through the second hack) Darvo: "Did you hear something strange? No? Okay, I'll keep going. Nearly done."

(after hacking the second terminal) Darvo: "I'm really sorry about this, Tenno, but you need to go to the third terminal. I just can't seem to find what I'm looking for here."

(when nearing the third terminal) Darvo: "Here we are. The last one. I'm going to try one more thing to see if I can't lure… I mean, find… the target."

Halfway through defending the last terminal, the Stalker appeared. The Tenno had to defeat the Stalker while still protecting the terminal.

(when the Stalker appears) Darvo: "There you are. Thought you could hunt me? Well, look who I brought: the Tenno."

(upon the Stalker being defeated) Darvo: "You did it! You took care of my problem. That freak's been tailing me for months. That's a load off my back. I'm so relieved."

After that the mission proceeded as usual towards extraction, and the Tenno was rewarded with a built Forma. Once the mission was completed, it could not be run again.

Aftermath

After the alert was completed, the Tenno received an inbox message from Darvo informing them of a new deal in the Market.

Inbox message: Darvo's Deals Are Back!

Friends!

You did it, you got that freak off my back. Well, some of you did and some of you didn't quite make it, but I won't hold that against any of you. What matters is I can now come out of hiding, and that means more deals for everyone.

To celebrate this occasion, I have put together the Super Charge Pack. It is everything you need to take your warframe to the next level, including boosters, an Orokin Reactor and Catalyst, Forma, and even extra warframe and weapon slots. Because there is no longer a price on my head, you all get half price on this deal. That's right, 50% off this amazing pack.

I'm not done yet, either. Keep an eye out for more deals over the next couple of days.

—Darvo

The next day, Darvo had another deal in the Market.

Inbox message: Let Me Make It Up to You

Friends,

I am hearing a very troubling rumour. Apparently, some of you feel that I took advantage of the Tenno. That I should have warned you I was luring a very dangerous assassin to your location so that you could kill him for me. But, friends, had I warned you, you may not have helped, and where would that leave me? You want me back in business, don't you?

Look, let me make it up to you. Courtesy of your hard work, I have a very special bundle for you. A Nekros warframe, the Carrier sentinel, a Soma rifle, and the ever-deadly Ether Reaper. All at half the usual market prices. Come on, Tenno, tell me a deal like that isn't worth a little risk?

—Darvo

After that, there was yet another deal in the Market.

Inbox message: One More Deal

Tenno,

I have one more deal for you. What do you think of a pack containing the Dread bow, Despair throwing blades and a Hate scythe? The Tenno who helped me out will know firsthand just how destructive these weapons can be. Last time I offered this pack, I got myself into a little bit of hot water. Now, thanks to your efforts, the pressure is off, and this time I can offer this deal at half price.

As for me, I am running out of stock, but I have a hot tip on some new product. Don't worry though, Tenno, I have learned my lesson. Everything will be aboveboard from now on. Trust me.

So long for now, Darvo

[Navigation: Hub → Events → Special Alerts → A Favour for Darvo]

#warframe #events #lore #darvo #stalker #corpus #special alerts #favour for darvo #orokin archives

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clexa--warrior · 6 years ago

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Noted thespian, Obama critic and advocate for deregulating murder, Isaiah Washington sent progressive political supporters into a state of not-giving-a-fuck today when he told a Fox News wrestler that he was leaving the Democratic Party.

On Wednesday’s episode of Nuff Said, which airs on Fox News’ online version of the ghetto, Fox Nation, the fourth most-famous actor named Washington behind Denzel, Instagram thespian Plies Washington and my cousin Metia (who was outstanding in my mother’s groundbreaking church play, Lawd, I Just Wana Be Sanctified), told former WWE wrestler-cum-political commenter Tyrus that he was leaving the Democratic Party, Fox News reports.

As a fierce critic of the Democratic Party myself, I have no problem with anyone who decides the Democratic Party is trash. I’ve literally written that. But I feel that anyone who talks about how little the Democratic Party has done for black people has at least a cursory obligation to mention that the Republican Party is far worse. Yet, Washington curiously decided to make his proclamation on the YouTube channel for white supremacy, Fox News, apparently not caring that the network would wield his announcement like a negro carrot to make it seem like he was a brave black man exiting the Democratic plantation.

And that’s just what they did. Washington didn’t just say he was leaving the Democratic Party. He said he was leaving the Republican and the Democratic Party. But through a series of furious cut and pastes, Fox News made sure you didn’t see any of that.

“The reason why I’ve chosen to walk from the Democratic Party as I know it, or the Republican Party, as I don’t know it, is something doesn’t feel right,” Washington said to the cool man with the backwards baseball cap, noting that he was walking away from political situations and organizations altogether.

Washington explained that it was going to be scary living in Hollywood knowing that it was controlled by liberals, but bravely vowed to continue his near-nonexistent career by following in the footsteps of brave nonpartisan new negroes like Kanye West and Van Jones, who have repeatedly assured us that they aren’t on anyone’s side as they trek to the White House to play footsie with Donald Trump at the new white nationalist Avenger headquarters while fulfilling their obligations to bash the black president every chance they get. It’s hard to tell if they don’t know Trump is retroactively applying Obama’s law to free people convicted of drug crimes or if they are intentionally lying.

It’s almost like they are playing Mad Libs.

The actor explained that he hasn’t seen any changes in his neighborhood during the 50 years he supported Democrats, conveniently forgetting that five of the eight presidents since he was old enough to vote, were Republican, as were the majority of the sessions of the Senate, House and state legislatures. I’m sure his neighborhood was doing fine, under Republican rule. I bet everyone in his hood has candy canes and ice cream cones under Donald Trump. Again, I’m not cheerleading for Democrats, but come on man…

At least state some facts.

Washington also took some time out of his busy walking schedule to repeat the illogical conservative rhetoric about gun reform, explaining that gun laws won’t stop criminals just like laws against murder won’t stop murder, which seems to conflict with actual data that show the murder rate is at an all-time low after tough, anti-violence laws were put into effect in states.

Also, advocating for common-sense gun laws to prevent gun crimes doesn’t mean you are anti-gun. I have advocated for tougher laws on sex crimes but I am not anti-sex. That idiotic idea is like saying people who want to lower the speed limit are anti-cars.

But I guess logic doesn’t matter.

As for now, I can hear the entire Democratic Party weeping, wondering how the hell they are going to wake up in the morning knowing that the fourth greatest Washington to ever put on pancake makeup won’t be in their corner.

Thoughts and prayers.

#isaiah washington #The 100 spoilers #i oop

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dxmedstudent · 6 years ago

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Do the even ones greater than 50!

That’s quite a few, but fortunately I need a little relaxation right now.

52. Do you ever want to get married?On the whole, yes. I don’t believe it should be religiously necessary, and I respect people who object to the history associated with marriage, or who think it’s just a piece of paper. It sounds like a financial pain in the butt, and it’s a risky move, logically speaking. But to me, it represents a conversation between two people that their life together is no longer provisional; a confirmation that they want to spend their lives together and work together as a team. I’m a realist; many marriages end in divorce, and I have as good a chance as anyone else of falling victim to those statistics. And it’s OK if things don’t work out; life can be complicated. But I also believe that when you meet the right person, there’s something special about agreeing to take that leap of faith together, and trying your best. Knowing someone feels that way about you must be an irreplaceable feeling.

54. Have you ever been cheated on? No, and I hope not to be.

56. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Introvert who’s had to pick up enough extrovert skills due to work and adulting. But really, I revert to introverted given half a chance.

58. What talent do you wish you’d been born with?Time travel or teleportation. Maybe flying. Do healing powers count as a talent? Lol. Realistically though, I guess I wouldn’t change who I was. Not because I’m perfect (far from it); there are lots of skills I’d love to have the time to develop. But I think it’s better to focus on what you can do now, rather than what you would have wished to have been.

60. Do you believe in love at first sight? No. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in attraction at first sight; I’m mortal, and very occasionally when I meet someone something inside goes “!!!”, but it’s usually a multifactorial thing, and it rarely happens on my first interaction with someone. But, that’s not the same as knowing someone intimately and loving them for who they are; this is not something that can happen instantly or be rushed. Most of my crushes developed over time. Maybe it doesn’t help that I am faceblind, which usually complicates things. This can make online dating harder; a picture on its own means little to me;someone can be absolutely gorgeous like a painting, but leave me cold or be completely forgettable. Talking is therefore a very important part of the process for me; you gain a much better idea of how well you click.

62. Have you ever dyed your hair? Yep, every few months since my mid 20s. I was gifted with greying hair since my late teens, and my ascension to silver-hair has rapidly gained pace since my mid 20s. My hair is greyest at the temples, which means that my usual hairstyle hides it pretty effectively. I’m quite a low maintenance person when it comes to my hair; I really just want to brush it, tie it in a bun and get on with my life. So I dye it as close to what is left of my natural hair colour as possible. I wish I had the time and energy to do something more dramatic with my hair, but medicine isn’t the easiest job to do wacky hair things. One day, I’ll let myself go natural with my hair, but given that most of my seniors in their 40s or 50s are less grey than me, I’m not quite ready to embrace the look, yet.

64. Would you go against your moral code for money?I hope not. I don’t care about money enough to compromise the things I believe in, but I’m also fortunate that I’m not impoverished. I know that’d be a much more difficult question to answer if it came from a position of severe financial need. It’s easy to say you wouldn’t do something for money when you are comfortable.

66. Who are you jealous of?I don’t believe in indulging feelings of jealousy (or envy, since the technical term jealousy doesn’t seem to fit here?), but in working through any stigmatised, negative emotions you feel. I’m not someone who gets particularly insecure about seeing other people’s lives on facebook or instagram etc. We all want different things at different times, and life is not a competition. Someone else’s happiness does not take yours away.

But in the loosest sense, sometimes, when I’m halfway through a set of 12h shifts, revising in my off hours and too tired/busy to see the people I care about or indulge my interests? I look at people living their normal 9-5 lives, with the time and energy to spend with loved ones and indulge their hobbies, and I feel a twinge that makes me re-evaluate my relationship with work because I too just want to be happy and maintain some semblance of a work-life balance. And if you just hang out with medics, you get a really warped perception of what a normal, healthy life is, so it’s actually important to hang out with non-medics too, and realise that there’s more to life than obsessing over medicine. Life needs balance, and I’m happy that people sometimes remind me of that, even if it’s at times when it gives me complicated feelings about it all.

68. How long was your longest relationship? My longest relationship is with myself, and with my parents who have put up with me for over three decades. My longest friendship has lasted since I was around 8 years old; we still talk regularly even though my best friend from primary school has now moved abroad! I’m still in touch with friends from secondary school, and even talk to some med school friends who I met in my previous degree pretty much daily. In comparison, no romantic relationship has lasted nearly as long, but they’ve lasted as long as was realistically feasible at the time. That’s not a competition; we put romantic relationships through a very different kind of process, because they are essentially an extended interview for a particularly intimate place in your life.

70. What is the sexiest thing someone could ever do for/to you? Be a feminist. Nothing like a guy that respects women, treats me like a person and understands the importance of consent.

But really. Most people? Nothing. If you don’t like someone, nothing is gonna make them sexy, no matter how alluring they might try to be. But if you like someone, isn’t almost anything they do kind of sexy because they are the one doing it? I find someone doesn’t even need to be trying to be remotely sexy if you like them, it just sort of… happens. Half the fun is the way that your gaze lingers over small, almost imperceptible details and mannerisms that make them who they are. That’s my excuse for getting uh… distracted by the most random things, anyway!

72. Are you in a relationship?I’ve retired from online dating and am seeing someone. There are a lot of things going on on my life right now (and theirs), so I’m just happy to take things one step at a time and see what happens.

74. Are you a bad person? I don’t believe so? At the very least, I hope I can try my best not to be. I try to be kind, and to do better. I try to learn from my mistakes. I don’t believe in passing value judgements on people lightly; most people aren’t ‘bad people’, and by stigmatising making mistakes, we can make it harder for people to admit their mistakes and learn from them. And it makes it harder for people to process their feelings and past experiences and work on doing better.

76. What did you do on your last birthday? I don’t remember that I did anything at all on my last birthday, actually. I think I took the day off work, so I must have done something; I’m pretty sure I celebrated with a few friends and family, because I always do something, even if it is something minor. But it’s been years since I did 'big’ birthday meetups, because it’s impossible to get most of my friends in the same place these days.

78. If your best friend died, what would you do? Be bereft. I don’t really know how to answer this question; does it want a description of the entire grieving process? Needless to say, the sudden death of someone close to me would be a huge shock.

80. If you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do? Do my best to spend time with all the people I care about and let them know how much they mean to me. Probably write some letters for their future selves, to make sure I got everything across. Give them all something of mine that I thought they would like, so they’d have something to remember me by.

82. Are you happier single or in a relationship? I’ve been single for much longer than I’ve ever been in relationships, and I’ve been perfectly happy single for the majority of that time. There’s a self-contained peace to living a happy, fulfilling single life, and I don’t believe that being single deserves the stigma that it sometimes gets. I get a lot of hassle from relatives about being single, but that was always frustrating because they assumed I must be miserable when I really wasn’t. That said, spending time with a person who makes you happy is also a pretty nice feeling, and contributes something a little different to your happiness. It can make an already nice life a bit nicer, even if it isn’t technically essential to live a nice life.

84. What is your happiest childhood memory?I don’t know that I can pick one. I have fond memories of birthday parties, or playing with my friends or sister. Fun days out in the park. School assemblies. That kind of thing.

86. Have you ever had an imaginary friend? No. I had a very vivid inner life as a kid; lots of stories about what the toys got up to, but they weren’t my friends as much as they were players in our stories. Maybe it’s because I had a sibling that I never really needed an imaginary friend.

88. What is your ideal career? Helping people, but then also getting to write/draw about it, and helping other people who help people.

Because competitive 'staying in bed all day with cats and a hot drink’ is not a real job, apparently.

90. Are you conservative or liberal? Liberal. Nothing much to say here; that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads my blog.

92. Do you like kissing in public? No. I’m a shy person by nature, so sloppy PDAs don’t come naturally to me. I also don’t like being stuck next to couples who are getting pretty intimate on the tube, so I don’t like the idea of making others comfortable by forcing my own romantic interactions on them. I’m a much cuddlier person in private, as my loved ones will attest.

94. Where would you like to live? I have no set plans, which is just as well because you never know where life will take you, between work or relationships. My parents never planned to end up where they did, so I remember their example and try not to get too hung up on planning exactly what form the future will take; because you really don’t always know where you will end up. But I’d ideally like to live in or around London, close enough to family and friends that they can remain a part of my life. To me, being able to spend time with the people you care about is important self-care, and ultimately important for my happiness.

96. Describe yourself in one word.thoughtful.

#askdx #ask dx

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viewwrangler · 6 years ago

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Chicago elections 2019

So it appears that as a result of last night’s effectively-a-primary election, Chicago will have

1) its second black mayor ever

2) its second woman mayor ever

3) its first black woman mayor ever, and

4) there’s a very strong possibility that it will have its first LGBT mayor ever

Not too shabby for one night’s elections, really.

Chicago poised to elect first African-American female mayor after Lori Lightfoot, Toni Preckwinkle advance (chicagotribune.com)

Chicago will elect its first African-American female mayor after former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle won enough votes Tuesday amid a record field of 14 candidates to move on to an April runoff election.

It’s only the second time Chicago has had a runoff campaign for mayor, which occurs when no candidate collects more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.

Unofficial results showed Lightfoot with 17.5 percent of the vote, Preckwinkle with 16 percent and Bill Daley with 14.7 percent, with 96 percent of precincts counted. [...] One of them will become Chicago’s second female mayor, following Jane Byrne, who served one term from 1979 to 1983. And if Lightfoot is elected, she would become the city’s first openly gay mayor. Both would become the second African-American elected Chicago mayor after Harold Washington, who served from 1983 until he died in 1987....

Historic Chicago election draws national spotlight, praise from black, LGBTQ communities: 'I think Chicago is potentially ready to turn the corner' (chicagotribune.com)

[...] after Tuesday’s election winnowed down 14 mayoral candidates to two African-American women, one of them openly gay, both Chicago voters and national political groups are focusing instead on how the city’s politics are set to change. [...] Longtime Chicagoan and former presidential candidate the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a Facebook post that he “could not be prouder” of Chicago. “For the first time in history, the next mayor of Chicago will be a black woman,” Jackson said. “Two progressive African-American women will square off in the April 2 mayoral runoff. I could not be prouder of my beloved city. We made herstory tonight.”

Live Chicago election results (chi.vote)

It will be interesting to see how the votes redistribute in the April final election. Turnout will be sharply lower, one suspects -- it generally is in what feel like special elections -- which may favor Preckwinkle. Assuming that she can shed being attached somewhat indirectly to a big, spreading corruption investigation in City Hall, that is. (There was a big hand-wringing Tuesday morning and afternoon about turnout being sharply lower in this election -- they were predicting it could be the lowest and oldest and whitest turnout this century -- but there was a late surge that was bigger, younger, and browner. ‘Cause millennials -- and damn near everyone else -- gotta work, y’all. It may be a rule/union requirement that some people get time off for voting, but hell if there’s a single business going to let ‘em, you hear me?)

I am kind of impressed that the whole thing about Lightfoot being a lesbian -- and married with children, even -- is more or less relegated to a sort of, “Oh? Yeah? Interesting. But how’s she going to handle the unfunded pension mandates without raising taxes?” issue. As it should be. (Also, pretty sure the pension issue can’t be handled without more tax increases, unfortunately.)

Elsewhere in our elections, we seem to have a theme:

Chicago’s Election Signals Break from the Past — in Wards and at City Hall (propublica.org)

... That evening, as totals streamed in, it became clear that voters demanded a change. Hadden overwhelmed Joe Moore, a 28-year incumbent, with 64 percent of the vote. She became the first openly queer black woman elected to the City Council, and one of the first black aldermen ever to come from the North Side....

[...] Months ago, Moore sensed that his re-election bid in the city’s far northeast corner could be tough. He watched from afar as 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled another Joe, longtime U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley, in a diverse, liberal New York City district not unlike the 49th Ward. In the age of President Donald Trump, Democrats seen as compromising or shopworn are sometimes viewed as part of the problem....

[...] By Tuesday afternoon, Hadden thought she had a chance. “But if nothing else, we’ve got new people voting, new people involved in the campaign, and we’re going to keep organizing,” she said. “In some ways, we’ve already won by putting the community’s vision first.”Within a few hours, she had won the election, too....

Teary Wrigleyville Ald. Tom Tunney claims victory in fight versus Ricketts family (chicagotribune.com)

A teary Ald. Tom Tunney claimed victory in his Wrigleyville battle against Cubs owners the Ricketts family [...] Fighting back tears, Tunney told supporters that he has sought to make sure the neighborhood is “successful with Wrigley Field in it.”

At his side was Mayor Emanuel, who said it’s important to support people who work hard, build schools, and invest in public safety and neighborhoods. “Tom's done that, and the people obviously reflected that,” Emanuel said."I think when you have somebody come in and say they're going to try to bigfoot the voice of the constituents, it's very important to see results like this," Emanuel told the Tribune. Asked if that was referring to the Ricketts family, which funded a group that sent out mailers against Tunney, the mayor brushed the question aside....

I should think the mayor would “brush the question aside”, yes.

Ald. Tom Tunney Holds On To His Seat In 44th Ward (blockclubchicago.org)

Incumbent Ald. Tom Tunney is poised to hold on to his seat in the 44th Ward.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Tunney had 63 percent of the vote, according to the Chicago Board of Elections. Challenger Austin Baidas was at 26 percent and Elizabeth Shydlowski was at 11 percent.

Tunney addressed supporters at a campaign party at El Jardin in Lakeview with outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel by his side.

“I’m grateful to the neighborhood for their support and will continue to work with the Cubs to make sure Lakeview remains one of the best neighborhoods in the city,” Tunney said. “I always have and always will believe in being a collaborative leader for the city.”

In the lead up to the election, the Ricketts family, owners of the Chicago Cubs, were linked both openly and behind the scenes to efforts to unseat Tunney... [...] Tunney, owner of Ann Sather restaurants, became the first openly gay alderman when he was first elected in 2003.

Apparently the Ricketts believe that the proper position for an Alderman in a ward in which they have major interests is supine, preferably beneath their feet. (Full disclosure: I know and like Tom Tunney, and it’s not as if the Ricketts have never gotten anything they want regarding the Cubs, as long as the requests are reasonable and can be balanced with the interests of the people who live there and whom Tom actually, you know, represents. He’s not particularly obstructionist. They just don’t get everything they want, they frequently don’t get it the way they want, and they don’t get it anything like as fast as they want. They get something, the people who live there get some concessions as well. Isn’t that the way this is all supposed to work? But I digress.)

We may even wind up with a few outright Socialists (well, US style socialists) on the city council (chicago.suntimes.com) after the April runoffs.

And apparently we have a vote buying scandal in the 25th ward? Really? Huh.(It looks like the ward was having all sorts of issues, in fact, since poll watchers had been sent to observe for an entirely separate problem.) It seems to have been at least somewhat successful, since the person buying the votes made it to the runoffs -- to replace an alderman who is leaving office because he was wired for sound in a corruption investigation, and now appears to have gone to ground. Seriously, you’d think that maybe someone would realize that people would actually be paying attention to the ward under these circumstances. (Irrelevant side note: the political conspiracy in the film “Widows” assumes a lot more competence than is sometimes in evidence in this city.)

That said, being indicted for federal crimes is apparently no bar to a campaign; Alderman Burke was re-elected without even having to go to a runoff. (”He may be a crook, but he’s OUR crook!” kind of sentiment, I guess. And allegedly, he was competent in his corruption. At least, he knew better than to buy votes on the day of the election in the polling place, anyway.)

#chicago #politics #chicago politics #chicago mayoral election #chicago elections

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

It’s as if we skipped right from 2018 to 2020. On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the first major Democratic candidate to formally dip a toe in the water of the 2020 presidential campaign, announcing the creation of an exploratory committee. Not everyone who creates an exploratory committee ends up becoming an official candidate, but Warren is very likely to. For all intents and purposes, she is now running for president.

Warren has experienced a swift rise, if not a meteoric one, to political stardom. A celebrated consumer advocate and law professor, she oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (better known as the post-financial crisis “bailout”) and shepherded the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during President Obama’s first term. In 2012, she ran for and won elected office for the first time, defeating Republican incumbent Scott Brown 54 percent to 46 percent in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts; she was re-elected by 24 points in 2018. Though not quite at the level of the current Beto-mania, she’s had her moments as a progressive folk hero — a viral video on fair taxation that helped clear the field for her first Senate campaign and Mitch McConnell’s swag-spawning complaint that “Nevertheless, she persisted” after she was cut off in the middle of a speech on the Senate floor.

But if you listen to conventional wisdom — and our favorite quasi-scientific tool, betting markets — Warren’s star has dimmed in recent months. President Trump’s repeated references to her as “Pocahontas” have kept alive a seven-year-old controversy over Warren’s claims that she has Native American ancestry, which potentially helped advance her career. Her release of a DNA test in October 2018 that she hoped would settle the matter was not well received. And in a party reportedly thirsty for a new generation of leadership, the 69-year-old Warren may have missed her window. For the first but certainly not the last time this year, let’s take a look at the case for and against the chances of a major 2020 Democratic candidate.

Ideologically, Warren is right where a Democratic primary candidate should want to be — it’s one of the strongest cards in her hand. According to FiveThirtyEight’s Trump Score, she votes with the president just 13.1 percent of the time, making her the third-most anti-Trump senator in the 115th Congress. Although she’s best known for her stands against income inequality and big banks, she is deeply liberal on both social and economic issues, according to an analysis of her votes and positions by OnTheIssues — although not quite as liberal as Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of Warren’s potential 2020 rivals.

Warren’s base is likely to overlap quite a bit with Sanders’s, the self-described democratic socialist who turned heads in the 2016 presidential primaries by winning 40 percent of Democratic delegates. Warren even seemed to make an explicit play for Sanders voters when she devoted a full minute (mid-personal bio, no less) of her four-and-a-half-minute announcement video to an economic-populist message. “America’s middle class is under attack. … Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie and they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice.”

In fact, at least one poll suggests that Warren and Sanders (if he runs again in 2020) will be fighting over the same pool of voters. Back in April 2018, Suffolk University conducted a poll of two versions of the 2020 Democratic primary in New Hampshire: one without Warren and one with her. In the version without her, Sanders pulled 25 percent of the vote. In the version with her, he dropped to 13 percent; Warren got 26 percent. None of the other six candidates about whom the poll asked lost as much support as Sanders did with Warren in the field.

Sanders and Warren have something else in common: the support of small donors, or those who give $200 or less to a campaign. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, as of Nov. 1, small donors were behind 56 percent of all the money raised by Warren’s re-election campaign. The only 2018 Senate candidate whose fundraising was more reliant on small donors was Sanders himself.

Small donors gave big to Warren

The five 2018 U.S. Senate candidates who raised the largest share of their donations from small donors as of Nov. 1, 2018

Candidate Party State Share of Contributions From Small Donors Bernie Sanders I Vermont 77%

–

Elizabeth Warren D Massachusetts 56

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Corey Stewart R Virginia 50

–

Beto O’Rourke D Texas 46

–

Geoff Diehl R Massachusetts 45

–

Source: Federal Election Commission via Center for Responsive Politics

And in terms of raw dollar amounts, Warren raised $10 million more from small donors than Sanders did, even though neither one was facing a competitive race. Warren’s $19.4 million small-donor haul was second only to Beto O’Rourke’s among 2018 general-election candidates for Senate or House. Presidential campaigns are expensive affairs, and being a strong fundraiser — particularly among small donors, a well that is less likely to run dry — is a huge advantage. It can also signal high voter enthusiasm for a candidate.

Warren’s deep pockets may also be financing her apparent strategy of building up goodwill among state-level Democrats who will be instrumental in primary and caucus field organizing. According to the Washington Post, she directed at least $7.6 million to Democratic campaigns for offices like state treasurer and legislator in 2018 — more than any rumored 2020 contender not named Michael Bloomberg. As of mid-October, Warren had also made 172 post-primary congratulatory phone calls to Democratic candidates, blasted her email list on their behalf 180 times, shared policy documents with them 63 times, held 61 one-on-one meetings, hosted 41 fundraisers and shot 36 videos. That is how you develop a network.

Central to Warren’s grassroots networking strategy may be New Hampshire — less than an hour’s drive away from her home base and the second state in the country (after Iowa) to cast primary ballots. While she sent one staffer each to Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada for the 2018 election, two of her aides moved to New Hampshire despite it not hosting any particularly competitive major elections. (They assumed pretty major roles there, too — as the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s political director and communications director.)

The polls at this point aren’t very predictive, but if the primaries were held today, it looks like New Hampshire would be her strongest state. In the latest poll of the 2020 New Hampshire Democratic primary, 17 percent of Granite Staters said they would vote for Warren, putting her in third place — 2 points away from second.1 In Iowa — or at least in the three Iowa caucus polls taken since Nov. 6, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polls database — she averages 8 percent, putting her in fourth place. She fares the worst in national polls, averaging 5 percent in seven national 2020 Democratic primary polls2 conducted since Election Day.

Overall, Warren’s campaign looks like it could go either way. With some skill and luck, she could launch herself right into the thick of the nomination fight. But there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about Warren as well, starting with her stature among her own constituents. Just after Election Day, UMass Amherst released a poll of the 2020 Democratic primary in Massachusetts, and Warren garnered just 11 percent of the sample. That is not good in a state where her name recognition is already high and Democrats are as intimately familiar with her record as any 2020 voter is going to get: Most eventual nominees were already lapping the field in polls of their home states at this point in previous presidential election cycles.

Her 2018 re-election was also unimpressive in a state as blue as Massachusetts. Warren won, but only by 24 points in a state nearly 30 points more Democratic-leaning than the country as a whole.3 Add in the extremely favorable national environment to Democrats, and she “should” have won Massachusetts by more than 39 points.4 By this method, Warren had the weakest incumbency advantage across hundreds of Senate and House elections last year.

Elizabeth Warren was 2018′s weakest incumbent

The 10 Senate and House incumbents who underperformed by the most in the 2018 elections*

Incumbent Party State or District Expected Margin† Actual Margin Net Incumbency Advantage Elizabeth Warren D MA D+39 D+24 -15 Chris Collins R NY-27 R+13 R+0 -13 Sheldon Whitehouse D RI D+36 D+23 -12 Mia Love R UT-4 R+12 D+0 -12 David Cicilline D RI-1 D+45 D+34 -11 Bob Menendez D NJ D+22 D+11 -11 Jim Costa D CA-16 D+25 D+15 -10 Duncan Hunter R CA-50 R+14 R+3 -10 Steve King R IA-4 R+13 R+3 -10 Rob Woodall R GA-7 R+10 R+0 -10

*Excluding open-seat elections, elections that did not feature both a Republican and Democratic candidate, jungle primaries, elections with multiple incumbents and elections where the incumbent was an independent.

†Based on the state or district’s partisan lean, its elasticity and the national popular vote.

Source: ABC News

It’s unclear what’s cooling voters on Warren. The fallout from her DNA test just weeks before Election Day is a decent guess. But the controversy over her ancestry may also be a proxy for other, less socially acceptable reasons why people dislike her, such as her gender or age. “I don’t think America’s ready for another Hillary. It has to be someone young and dynamic,” one interviewee told Boston radio station WBUR-FM.

Warren has long polarized audiences and was never the world’s most beloved politician to begin with. That may be because she’s a woman with a confrontational style. It may be sexism mixed with other reasons. Whatever the cause(s), Warren isn’t in the best starting position as she enters the fray. But she’s not in the worst position either — she’ll likely find a receptive audience for her message in terms of policy and ideology. A well-run campaign would put her among the field’s top contenders. We’ll find out soon enough: Warren says she’ll announce for sure whether she’s running “early in the new year.”

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nathaniel Rakich

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