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US Midterm Elections Discussion
November 4th will be election day in the U.S. Though the presidential race is still forming, this midterm election has lots of close races that may give a hint about the likely outcome in 2016. Many pundits and pollsters see a strong chance that Republicans will gain a majority in the Senate in Tuesday's election. Think of the discussion attached to this post as the place to discuss the election: candidates, political advertising, voting technology, and the wisdom of voter ID laws. If you are voting, this chart of poll closing times might be useful. (And, as with the similar post from 10 years ago today, you can take a look at the current poll to see what the Zeitgeist looks like for Slashdot readers, and mentally fill in the past tense, if you're one of the many early voters; not much room in the poll question field.)
Because we are about to regain some freedom by telling the Democrat party to STFU and sit down?!
Wow. If it was up to me, I'd bitch slap both parties. The problem isn't Democrats or Republicans, the problem is Democrats AND Republicans. Both parties are very incompetent. Instead of trying to help the people, both parties are more worried about the agenda's the superpac's are paying them for.
Be seeing you...
That's right! Vote the republicans back in! That'll work. And then, when you get pissed off with the republicans again, you can vote for... wait for it... democrats! Because everybody knows, if you don't vote for one or the other, the cops will come and shoot your dog. Do you want that blood on your hands?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Now democrats who won in Obama wave of 2008 are defending deep red districts and might lose them. In 2016 the Republican senators who won in the 2010 wave will be defending. This Republican senate majority will not last long.
The House majority will last longer. The gerrymandered districts and the hold on the state election system is making the Republican primary the real battle to win. That is creating very very hard right wing reps who take extreme positions. They alienate all the emerging vote blocs with impunity because they invulnerable. It is creating big trouble for Republicans running for Statewide offices.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'll note that the Dems changed the rules so you don't need the 60 votes to override for TWO things: A) Judicial nominations below the Supreme Court level and B) Executive nominations below the cabinet level and in no other situations.
There were no changes to the filibuster for legislation (though personally I'd have loved to see it change from 60 votes to stop debate over to 40 votes to continue debate), and Mitch McConnell has indicated in the past that he doesn't see changing that should he become Majority Leader this fall.
As for the filibuster, I'd love to see it change just on the basis of "If you say you want to continue debate, don't say that then leave town." I'm fine with continuing "debate" (not that they ever actually debate the items they're delaying/killing), but by god if you're going to do it you'd better care enough to actually stick around.
fencepost
just a little off
The odds of more shutdowns in 2015-16 are high.
The 2013 shutdown came about because the House Republicans refused to do their job by producing a budget, sending negotiators to the joint House-Senate conference, and voting for the COMPROMISED budget. After a 16-day government shutdown and $20B in damages to the economy, the House Republicans accepted a budget deal that they would have gotten anyway if they done their job in the first place. If the Republicans shut down the government in the next two years, I fully expect President Hillary to take them to the woodshed.