(01-06-2021, 12:05 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote: Chatham county stopped counting for the evening.

No, they didn't. Chatham County has two different boards, one to accept and approve ballots for counting and one to count them. The second board finished counting everything the first one had given them, and had nothing left to count. They didn't "stop" for a planned interval. They literally ran out of work.

(01-06-2021, 07:04 AM)homebiscuit Wrote:

(01-06-2021, 12:52 AM)TJBender Wrote: It’s almost like making elections accessible to voters encourages them to vote.

They’ve always been accessible. It required some effort, but anyone could vote.

What’s driven the turnout this time is the polarizing person in the White House.

Agreed. If this is a normal year with a sensible President, this election is lucky to get half the voters it normally would, and the seated Senators win with their eyes closed.

You can draw conclusions from that, among them that Trump tanked his own Senate, and that making the election more accessible to people who couldn't/wouldn't have otherwise been able to take part let the swing happen.

(01-06-2021, 08:15 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote: "Now we take Georgia, then we change America"

- Charles Schumer, Senate Majority Leader

Point to make here?

(01-06-2021, 08:37 AM)homebiscuit Wrote: It’s my opinion we’re going to see a swell of moderation in both houses. People are worn out with the political bickering.

Trump’s economic and foreign policies benefited Americans of all stripes. It was the man himself who lost his re-election. Chuck and Nancy aren’t getting the mandate they believe to burn it down and the Squad is no where near as influential as the media wants everyone to think.

All of this talk about stacking the courts and giving statehood to PR and DC will never get traction. Wait and see.

I hope you're right on moderation, and I'm optimistic. There are moderate Democrat Senators, plus at least one conservative one, and that will keep the chamber honest. Believe it or not, Biden is actually pretty moderate himself. He didn't set the agenda under Obama, he just pushed it in Congress. I know he's going to have a lot of pressure exerted on him from the AOC crowd, but I think this election has shown that most Americans are tired of blind, total partisanship, and it will show in his legislation.

PR statehood I could see happening, because it's been simmering for so long and they finally seem to want it. DC statehood is more of a gray area because the Constitution makes it one. Stacking the courts isn't going to happen, and it never was. If we ever have a President AOC, two things will happen:

1. Court-stacking will become a huge topic of conversation
2. I'll move to Canada

(01-06-2021, 08:49 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote: Even if Loeffler and Perdue won, I would still walk away baffled that the election what THIS close with THESE candidates in a RED state like Georgia. It is just insane to me.

I can agree with you that because of the slim majority in both Congress and the Senate, nothing too extreme will ensue THIS time. "Moderate" democrats are already on record for not wanting to get rid of the filibuster, so I assume that line of thinking will bleed into statehood and packing the courts. 

Whatever Stacy Abrams did will be mirrored in other states like Texas that are suddenly turning purple. Not sure where the GOP goes from here. I do know that raising corporate tax rates (#1 on the agenda) on the back end of a pandemic isn't going to be a good thing. Biden also promised additional 2K stimulus as well, so the debt will continue to skyrocket. It will be a good year(s) for bitcoin and precious metals I think.

First note, I think we can safely say that Georgia is no longer red. Three things happened there:

1. The last of the millennials were eligible to vote in 2016, and the earlier members of Generation Tide are now involved. Both groups lean liberal, Generation Tide overwhelmingly so.
2. The suburbs of Atlanta have grown, and they've grown because young people and young families are coming in from out of state. Gwinnett and Cobb Counties used to be a bastion of Republicans. Now, they're not. Republican strongholds are being pushed further into rural areas. Even Forsyth County is starting to blue up with [BLEEP] (edit: the bleep is for a city name that rhymes with humming) seeing growth for the same reason.
3. Stacey Abrams, who seems to me to be a sure thing for governor in 2022, especially if Trump runs that stooge Collins in the primary, did an incredible job of turning out the vote. Will she be a great governor? Jury's out, but I think she's too liberal and will bring herself down. She would be an outstanding Democratic Party chair, and I think that role and a seat in the House are her long-term future.

Trump's model in Georgia relies on extremely high turnout in the rural areas. He got that in November, and he still got it in some places yesterday. It also relies on low turnout in cities. With mail-in voting now being accessible to everyone, the low turnout part will be tough to achieve.

In short, this happened in a red state because Georgia's not red anymore. It's purple, and it's getting bluer.

(01-06-2021, 09:35 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote:

(01-06-2021, 09:28 AM)SeldomRite Wrote: The current main positions of the democratic party are actually the more popular positions. Getting people to consistently vote against their actual interests and wants takes a lot of conditioning. Social programs like Medicare and social security, and government regulation to preserve natural resources for people's use are democratic party positions, not Republican positions. It's the Republican positions against those that require indoctrination and twisting of people's understandings to continue. Did you even see the commercials for the georgia Senate runoff? Democratic commercials about what Democrats can do to help regular people with policy vs Republican commercials about how evil the Dems are and socialism and saving the country from the evil left wing.

If you watched those commercials or saw Loeffler's debate performance and thought anything other than, "how could people possibly vote for monsters like these two ghouls who refuse to even talk about reality," then you might have a serious problem.

This is a fundamental difference between how Democrats think and what Trump eliminated to have the economy humming at a pace never seen before, before the pandemic.

Preserve natural resources? Give me a break. Lobbyists use climate change to line their pockets and most folks are just too dumb to see it. Check out the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries sometime.

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(01-06-2021, 09:34 AM)Cleatwood Wrote: Preying on people who don’t know any better?

“I’m gonna build the bestest wall ever!”
“We are gonna lock her up!”

He riled up a certain portion of our country who clearly don’t know any better. Now this doesn’t apply to everyone who votes for Trump but he had a schtick and it worked..... once.

His policies were actually the best part of his presidency. Of all the things to be pissed about, I was surprised SeldomRite picked deregulation.

(01-06-2021, 09:53 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote:

(01-06-2021, 09:45 AM)SeldomRite Wrote: See, your response to me shows such an unhinged level of indoctrination that you didn't even try to understand the part you highlighted and just immediately started going off on a tangent about climate change. Trump didn't affect the economy in any significantly positive way early on and affected it in a decidedly negative way late in his presidency.

Also, here's a reality check for you, regulations create jobs, deregulation destroys them.

The pre-pandemic numbers do not support your statement that deregulation destroys jobs. Quite the opposite actually. Deregulation encourages companies to expand, thus generating jobs.

Also, I am not "indoctrinated" about climate change and natural resource preservation. I am just reasonable enough to know its a global issue and domestic politics aren't going to solve anything.

1. Deregulation has historically strengthened industries. That's actually why we should pursue it for telecommunications. If every company has access to wherever they want to be, consumers get better prices and the industry as a whole thrives. Look at airlines, for example.
2. Climate change is a global issue. And last time I checked, the US is part of the globe, and Trump has made us a point to not be when it comes to that area.
3. Lithium-ion batteries are a terrible thing. They require destructive mining, they ultimately don't last very long before needing to be replaced, and once dead, they're dead and generate a lot of waste. Oh, and they explode. A better solution is needed, but right now there really isn't one. Maybe hydrogen fuel cells for cars, but those also have a tendency to, you know, explode.
4. The best debate performance by a GOP candidate in this runff was from David Perdue. His decision to stay home was tactically top-notch.

The honest truth about Loeffler is that she was a dead horse walking. She was extremely unpopular here because of her trading on death shenanigans from early in the pandemic, as she insisted that it was a nothing-burger (a term I will be thrilled to never hear from a politician again) while buying up stock in big pharma and PPE producers based upon info she got from a classified meeting on COVID-19 days after taking office. She freaking PISSED a lot of people off, even on the Republican side of the equation. She was also appointed to the seat as a buddy of Brian Kemp, even when the Trump electorate here wanted Dumb Collins, so she really had no choice but to go far-right and abandon anything and everything that gave her appeal to moderates. Then she had to go up against Pastor Warnock, who has very strong, very direct ties to Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis, and who is a very respected, very popular leader in the community. Basically, he's the anti-Loeffler, and Loeffler was unpopular from the start, so...that one was kind of inevitable. I was expecting Warnock to beat Loeffler and Perdue to beat Ossoff, but it sure looks like I (and the pollsters) whiffed on the second race.

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