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Post by maxinquaye on Aug 28, 2018 19:45:33 GMT -5
I've followed the Florida races today - or rather, I've clicked on the twitter hashtag now and then while doing administrative chores. It looks like Andrew Gillum has beat Gwen Graham on the Dem side. Andrew Gillum is black, very left-wing, and was very much an outsider. Now it looks like he's beaten Graham. With 80% of the votes counted, he leads by 1%.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2018 21:54:54 GMT -5
I read somewhere that the polls on this race were waaay off. I wonder...landline polls?
It will be interesting to see how such a candidate fares in Florida in the general election. Florida is a different animal than New York. I'd like a Democratic sweep; I worry about whether very liberal candidates will fly in red and purple states, even with a Trump backlash.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2018 22:04:34 GMT -5
oh, wow -- I just saw the numbers you posted on twitter on the massive turnout increase over 2014.
This is apparently not going to be an ordinary race.
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Post by maxinquaye on Aug 28, 2018 22:09:20 GMT -5
It may be pure prejudice on my part, but I see Florida as a state with an older demographic. People who can afford to up sticks and move across the North American continent. Those people are probably not likely to vote for a Bernie-leaning Democrat. On the other hand, Florida is also heavily hispanic, and maybe minorities will come out en masse for the Dems. Like I said on Twitter, the turnout on the Dem side was phenomenal. Nearly double of 2014.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2018 22:15:07 GMT -5
I've been wondering how the influx of Puerto Ricans post-hurricane might change things.
My conventional wisdom says "pick a more centrist candidate in red and purple states." But then, if there was a huge increase in Dem turnout, and low enthusiasm on the GOP side, that wisdom might not hold.
I guess we'll see!
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Post by Optimus on Aug 28, 2018 23:11:27 GMT -5
I moved out of Florida several years ago, but I still try to keep up on the politics down there. Gillium's win is interesting. The majority of Dems didn't want him but the fact that many Democratic races are (over)saturated with candidates could well lead to more outcomes like this.
Graham and Levine were kind of similar, at least on the issues, though Graham was seen as being a bit too willing to cozy up to some Republican issues, like the Keystone Pipeline.
I think if Levine hadn't run, Gillium likely would've gotten crushed. Most of Levine's 20,000+ votes would've gone to Graham. But, with 5 Democratic candidates, it waters down the vote spread and makes plurality victories like Gillium's much more likely (I think it was 5, IIRC? I know there were at least 4 that actually got votes, but I could've sworn there were 5 in the state primary debate).
I agree with Gillium on most of his issues and I have no doubt that Florida has Rick Scott fatigue (they should, because he was a garbage governor). Key to Democrats winning now will be rallying behind Gillium (I imagine that will require both Graham and Levine giving full-throated endorsements of him) and getting their asses to the polls (more Republicans made it to the primary polls even though they had fewer candidates).
It will require both of those things happening in a significant way and, as much as I want that to happen, I'm a bit skeptical as to whether it will based on typical Dem voting behavior.
Still, though, I'm holding out hope (but not holding my breath) that they'll do it and Gillium wins. I think he'd be a fresh change for the state and I'm confident he'd govern a smidgen closer to the center than he campaigned.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 29, 2018 13:42:37 GMT -5
So, on a scale of 0 to racist, Gillium's Republican opponent is....?Using the context-dependent dogwhistle of calling a successful black guy "articulate" isn't helping DeSantis' claim that he wasn't wink-wink, nod-nodding to racists with his "monkey this up" remark. I'm guessing he's trying to say that he meant it in the same way as "muck this up," and I admit we have a lot of weird idioms in the South, but I've lived all over the South and never in my life heard that term before. Soooo...yeah. I'm not sure I buy his excuse that it was a perfectly innocent thing to say and these damned, evil liberals are just twisting is words. "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou
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Post by prozyan on Aug 29, 2018 13:45:01 GMT -5
"Monkey fuck things up" is a fairly common saying here in SE New Mexico/West Texas.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 29, 2018 15:24:10 GMT -5
Okay, I can buy that it's close to that kind of phrase.
Still, though, if he was sincerely using it in that way, it at least shows a stunning lack of awareness on his part.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2018 15:27:42 GMT -5
Definitely shows a stunning lack of awareness, at a minimum. And the guy really doesn't give me much reason to extend him the benefit of the doubt. He looks pretty awful.
It's just striking how many candidates in the Trumpian mold just happen to obliviously use terms that sound like racist dog whistles...
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Post by nighttimer on Aug 29, 2018 15:55:00 GMT -5
"Monkey fuck things up" is a fairly common saying here in SE New Mexico/West Texas. If I recall my geography, Florida is nowhere near SE New Mexico/Texas and when you're a right-wing White Republican taking a shot at a left-wing Black Democrat, there's no sugarcoating the absolute shit Ron DeSantis is shoveling. You might think after Roseanne Barr's monkey meltdown, these Trump-slurpers would know better, but they just can't help themselves. They try to hold their racism in but it bursts out like a fart.
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Post by Optimus on Aug 29, 2018 17:04:14 GMT -5
Definitely shows a stunning lack of awareness, at a minimum. And the guy really doesn't give me much reason to extend him the benefit of the doubt. He looks pretty awful. It's just striking how many candidates in the Trumpian mold just happen to obliviously use terms that sound like racist dog whistles... Yep, and funny how they claim it's always just by innocent accident. And, the fact that it keeps happening - and each time it's well publicized enough that there's little chance they haven't all seen the coverage of these incidents - makes me suspect they know exactly what they're saying. I feel like Trumpers need to have a permanent hashtag on the end of every tweet they make and sentence they say: #ImeantThatInTheNonRacistWay Granted, even if they did I still wouldn't believe it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2018 17:53:58 GMT -5
Florida is facing quite an interesting clash in that race -- you have an extremely Trumpy candidate vs. an extremely liberal black candidate.
It's not the one Alabama voters faced -- a Trumpy candidate who also happened to be a child molester vs. a moderate democrat. Sure, the guy who wasn't a child molester did win by a hair, but that one should have been an easy choice, given, ya know, child molestation. Despite my relief at Doug Jones winning the race, I found myself depressed that it was by such a slim margin. Come on, that wasn't so much about politics as basic human decency -- except that, alas, it wasn't.
Here, while I find the Trumpy candidate gross and unpalatable and he reeks of racism, he's not actually a child molester as far as I know. And the guy going up against him is as lefty as they come, and a person of color on top of it. And it's a state that's gone red for a while.
Barring some reeking controversy emerging, I think the race is going to come down to a test of whether and how much Trump has alienated moderate voters and galvanized liberal voters. It should be interesting. I expect the margin is going to be a slim one, but I wouldn't venture to guess which way it will go. I guess we'll see.
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Post by Christine on Aug 29, 2018 18:26:02 GMT -5
If candidates like this know exactly what they're saying, what is the motive? If it really is a racist dog-whistle, in this case, at least, it would seem largely superfluous. A white republican saying "hey, I'm your guy" when the opposition is black.... Is that really necessary for racists to rally?
What if, assuming it's intentional, rather than being a racist dog whistle, it's a liberal dog whistle. Use the phrase knowing the liberals will freak out and "unfairly" cry racism, attacking our poor innocent well-meaning anti-socialist candidate. As far as rallying the base, liberal hatred far surpasses racial hatred.
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Post by michaelw on Aug 29, 2018 18:35:44 GMT -5
Come on, that wasn't so much about politics as basic human decency -- except that, alas, it wasn't. Look, he denies it. He totally denies it. * *If you really want to cringe, just imagine how many votes Moore still would've gotten if he'd admitted he was guilty. You know it still would've been thousands of votes.
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