Brontoforumus

Having 40/60% of the country entirely convinced the other side can only win if they cheat and shouting about it nonstop is near the top though.

Destroying the people's confidence in the voting system will lead (and has led) directly to coups.

So I've seen a lot of uncertainty about why and how Newsom is being recalled. I've explained it a lot to a lot of people, so I'm going to post a log here so I can just fucking link it in the future.

10:47 PM <chibisede> why is Newsom even being unelected?
10:51 PM <chibisede> heh, 60% oppose his recall. i guess nothing really sells keeping him more than the people that crawled out of the woodwork to replace him
10:52 PM <Romosome> he managed to piss off everyone by doing general corrupt boobery
10:52 PM <Romosome> like when he hard-mandate locked down all of LA...then went to a fucking vineyard gala without masks
10:54 PM <chibisede> oh. a state that holds standards for its governor? frickin nuuuuts
10:56 PM <chibisede> i hope the registration got slightly mixed up with the bear guy, and they wind up actually electing the bear
10:56 PM <chibisede> i mean, shit, future governor is already on their flag
11:32 PM <Friday> wait, is it official?
11:33 PM <Friday> 60%?
11:33 PM <Friday> or is that just a poll
11:33 PM <chibisede> just people poll
11:33 PM <Friday> k
11:33 PM <Friday> So Newsom has been recalled because...
11:33 PM <Friday> I keep having to explain this, no offense, but it seems most people (even californians) are unaware
11:33 PM <Friday> So California has a recall election that can be triggered by enough signatures.
11:34 PM <Friday> So what the GOP does in California is they troll for years and years and years to get enough signatures.
11:34 PM <Friday> They do it to every single Dem Governor.
11:34 PM <Friday> I've seen people in parking lots for YEARS with huge signs saying SIGN PETITION TO RECALL.
11:34 PM <Friday> Once they hit that threshold, the recall election gets triggered.
11:35 PM <chibisede> man of course they would if given such a pointless inch
11:35 PM <Friday> Then they hope they can sneak in someone like Elder.
11:35 PM <Friday> It has very little, if nothing at all, to do with Newsom's stupid mistake of breaking his own lockdown mandate or anything else.
11:36 PM <Friday> Which was, admittedly, incredibly fucking stupid.
11:36 PM <Friday> Just the absolute worst optics imaginable.
11:36 PM <Friday> Well, I guess he could have cut a baby in half and fucked it or something.
11:36 PM <Friday> But other than that.
11:36 PM <chibisede> still like, not even in the top third governor shit-optics of the past year
11:37 PM <Friday> true. Because both DeSantis and Abbott are murdering children.
11:37 PM <Friday> So, like I said. Cutting babies in half.
11:37 PM <Friday> But yeah I wish I could just like, show you all a supercut of the RECALL NEWSOM stand that's been up for years in the Toys R Us parking lot.
11:38 PM <Friday> "California is one of 19 states that allow voters to remove state officials before the end of their term. No reason is necessary — the only requirement to put a recall on the ballot is enough voter signatures. That number must be 12% of voters in the last election for the office, and must include voters in at least five counties. The magic number for Newsom’s would-be recallers: 1,495,709 valid signatures."
11:38 PM <Friday> "The secretary of state certified on July 1 that recall supporters submitted 1,719,900 valid signatures — enough to trigger a recall election."
11:38 PM <Friday> So you need 1.5 million sigs.
11:38 PM <Friday> That's it.
11:39 PM <chibisede> sounds like such a peak Dem thing to still have in 20XX. they got the state in the bag, but insist on keeping this shit process in place just to hand the GOP a way to cheat in a candidate
11:39 PM <Friday> I think Trump got 3mil votes in 2020.
11:39 PM <Friday> So yeah.
11:39 PM <Friday> NOTHING to do with Newsom fucking up, or being bad.
11:39 PM <Friday> It's literally just them trolling for signatures.
11:39 PM <Friday> for years.
11:39 PM <chibisede> gathering signatures, cuz they can't gather votes~
11:39 PM <Friday> oh, sorry. No.
11:39 PM <Friday> 6 million for trump.
11:40 PM <Friday> Jeff Bidet DEM 11,110,250 63.5%
11:40 PM <Friday> Donald Trump GOP 6,006,429 34.3%
11:40 PM <Friday> So they need 1.5 million out of those 6 million.
11:40 PM <Friday> And they got it over 3 or 4 years.

**********************************************

So there you go. 12% of the voters, five counties. Years and years to gather the sigs. Way, way before his stupid bullshit where he broke his own mandate.

Additional fun fact: Neither Florida nor Texas have any form of governor recalls allowed.

I suspect there's also an element where they figure it could work because it worked in 2003.

This ignores that Schwarzenegger was (1) a bona fide A-list movie star with (2) the political connections of a Kennedy and (3) a moderate Republican, a thing which basically no longer exists.

For all that, I think it still could have worked in 2021, if Democrats hadn't turned out. That's something the Republicans were counting on: they can't win in California in a regular election year, but if turnout is low enough, they can win in a recall election.

But it doesn't look like that's going to happen. It looks like Democrats are turning out, and there are a variety of reasons for that, including Larry Elder saying a bunch of crazy shit that got people's attention and, y'know, all the shit that's coming out of Florida and Texas and getting people to focus on politics at a time when they might not otherwise.

Course, people are still casting ballots; it's not a done deal yet. It's looking good for Newsom but I don't want to count ballots before they hatch.

So apparently



EDIT: The point isn't that she's apparently fully bought into the Dem way of thinking where you do performative nonsense while not actually doing anything to genuinely help people. It's that she also not using her substantial individual powers as a Congresscritter to do anything.

For example, a Congresswoman standing with the protesters outside that event Lee Carter-style would have had a pretty good shot at protecting them from being clubbed and beaten by cops.

I mean, I guess this is an example of Democrats eating themselves, but it might go better in the "Mongrel reposts dumb shit somebody said on Twitter" thread.

Well, there's a lot of arguing about it and I'm not that interested in leftistlobsterfight.jpg. I'm just disappointed and I do feel like saying so. Whether or not some yahoo on Twitter said those things, the point is valid (haven't read any Twitter today and got the news from friends who are pretty hard left, but w/e).

AOC could have been outside, standing with the people being beaten to try and protect them. I'm not asking her to actually take a police beating if it comes to it, but she didn't even try. Maybe she'll still do some good and this will be a blip, or a learning moment, or a lapse in judgment or whatever the hell you want to call it. But this is not a good thing, or a sign of a person who is committed to fighting with every tool at their disposal, and sorry, but people who can fight tooth and nail and claw and tail are the sort of people the US needs to step the fuck up right now, not another Obama.

Things in the US are (IMO) so far gone that I would say you're very literally - yes Thad, literally - on the edge of being a Failed State. Under those circumstances, ticklishly taunting the ruling classes at a gala ball you were invited to anyway is some fucking garbage weaksauce shit.

Like first I heard, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt because being a bit of a glamour girl who likes pretty dresses is actually completely inoffensive if not outright charming. And she's not wrong when she reminds people she gets a torrent of unjustifiable shit. But context matters, and the more I think about it, the more the bitter disappointment stings.

The way I see it, it's the global community that's bordering on a failed state, and the United States is doing what it can in the face of it.

Brentai wrote:The way I see it, it's the global community that's bordering on a failed state, and the United States is doing what it can in the face of it.

I have the opposite take; that the US is leading the pack. If the US falls, so do we all.

Wasn't it already called yesterday? :V

EDIT: Okay, okay, two days ago technically, since it's 12:25 here. Because I know SOMEONE would have said it.

Nobody is above criticism* but declaring that somebody has failed as a progressive and given up her ideals based entirely on her wearing something dumb to the Met gala is maybe an over-so-slightly disproportionate response. To say nothing of the undertones of sexism. And the sheer lack of self-awareness it takes to fire up Photoshop to make an Animorphs meme you can post on Twitter in protest of someone doing something performative and pointless that doesn't actually help anybody.

If Leftist Twitter has declared AOC to be insufficiently pure, I don't think that's an AOC problem.

* though I suspect the people rending their garments over AOC's dress think one guy is

I think a lot of other Congresspeople who haven't espoused progressive ideals so vocally might have shown solidarity with the people peacefully protesting the met gala and tried to prevent the cops from beating them up. She certainly projects, and benefits from having, the image of being the kind of congressperson who stands up for the little guys in situations like that.

Otherwise, I would actively support the way she chose to attend.

Thad wrote:Nobody is above criticism* but declaring that somebody has failed as a progressive and given up her ideals based entirely on her wearing something dumb to the Met gala is maybe an over-so-slightly disproportionate response. To say nothing of the undertones of sexism. And the sheer lack of self-awareness it takes to fire up Photoshop to make an Animorphs meme you can post on Twitter in protest of someone doing something performative and pointless that doesn't actually help anybody.

If Leftist Twitter has declared AOC to be insufficiently pure, I don't think that's an AOC problem.

* though I suspect the people rending their garments over AOC's dress think one guy is

I don't think it's completely out of line when some voters have suffered nothing but disappointment from the Dems for their entire lives. It's like Obama disappointment flashbacks; there's a yawning pit of hopelessness that opens up.

Is it fair to burden AOC with such huge expectations? Maybe not, but I feel that's a testament to the desperation of the situation, as well as the emotion involved. But also it is on her, at least to a point, as Upthorn has correctly pointed out that being outside with the protesters is "on-brand" for AOC.

I mean, are the loonies and Trumpers and all the other cretins exploiting this? Yes of course they are. And is there over-criticism from hardcore leftists who will never be satisfied with anything or anyone? Yes, that too. But I don't think that invalidates the core criticism. I don't think it makes normal leftists' fear and despair irrational, or that we should ignore it even if it's not coming in a form we like (which totally never happens, right?).

The thing I keep coming back to is... Just imagine how the protesters outside must have felt as the cops busted them up.

I worry you're entirely too concerned about the asshole down the road laughing at your house burning down when your house is, in fact, burning down.

I don't remember whether it was AOC herself or somebody else on Twitter who pointed out that her "tax the rich" opinions were dismissed as sour grapes before she made it big and now are dismissed as hypocritical and ineffective since she's now in a position of (comparative) power yet billionaires still exist, but the point to take away is that a single congressperson is not enough to undo the system's devotion to maintaining the status quo, and it is an intended byproduct of the system that we blame her for this impossibility.

I find myself thinking of this Achewood comic a lot lately, which turned 15 years old just this past weekend. "Do not make monuments to the living, for they may still disgrace the stone."

The other thing I think is that her presence would absolutely not have stopped the cops from busting things up, and her detractors would salivate over the prospect of photos or video of her getting maced (or worse).

Newbie wrote:The other thing I think is that her presence would absolutely not have stopped the cops from busting things up

I really don't think that we can say that with any certainty at all.

Newbie wrote:The point to take away is that a single congressperson is not enough to undo the system's devotion to maintaining the status quo, and it is an intended byproduct of the system that we blame her for this impossibility.

This is a very good point. By talking the talk she has peen place of highly elevated scrutiny, which brings every imperfection in her walking the walk into much clearer view.

The other thing I think is that her presence would absolutely not have stopped the cops from busting things up, and her detractors would salivate over the prospect of photos or video of her getting maced (or worse).

It is not at all clear to me that she would have been successful at protecting the protestors if she'd shown them solidarity. Similar efforts have had extremely mixed results in the past, and she might just have gotten beat up along with them. But it still would have been solidarity.

I do think that individual congressfolk have a lot of power that goes completely unused.

I understand party whipping is a thing, but like, it's a lot different in the US than it is here.

Of course this just underlines how much a factor money is in the system.

It's the fucking Met Gala people really need to get a fucking grip. On the same day Lauren Boebert was hosting a rally where she continues her project to subtly encourage her followers to kill Democrats in God's name but all I'm gonna hear from people with ANTIFA in their bios is about AOC's dress.

Also... AOC was invited to attend for free in her official capacity as an elected official from New York, it's not like she paid to be there.

Honestly its all fucking bullshit. AOC, a politician who is FAMOUSLY from NYC and represents NYC accepted an invite, as a representative of NYC, to the biggest party in NYC and still made a point to make at lease something of a stand for her beliefs in doing so. How is that controversial? Its literally only controversial to people who believe, "And yet you participate in the society, hmm makes you think" is valid criticism of leftists.