she can file a resignation "taking effect date of" the day after the election, and start the special election clock at 145-160 days the day after election (the election must also take place on a Tuesday), but the resignation doesn't take effect until the day she's sworn in.

When Romney was governor of Mass, the law stated that when a senator gave up their term, the governor got to appoint the permanent replacement.

Well, the democratic-controlled legislature didn't want that to happen so they hastily passed - and overrode Romney's veto - a new law that said there had to be a special election within a certain number of months to choose the permanent replacement, the governor only gets to choose the interim replacement.

Now, not even wanting to allow the governor that much latitude, the Massachusetts legislature could pass another veto-proof law that said the person that the governor chooses has to be confirmed by the legislature.

Trump Fundraiser Threatens Romney Republicans with Possibility of Gary Busey Being Nominated to the Supreme Court

I called it!

Just anecdotal, but I was hanging out with some friends this weekend, and two of them are moderate conservatives--I know they each voted for Romney, and I am pretty sure they voted for McCain. And both of them are voting for Clinton. (One left open the possibility that if the polling showed NC in a blowout in either direction, he might vote for Gary Johnson to help him reach 10%).

I know that Trump's whole strategy is to bring in new voters and convert non-traditional voters to the GOP. But based on what I have seen, he will have to make up some ground with Romney Republicans to get back to zero before he starts improving on recent numbers.

Couple additional thoughts. My friends are not a representative sample, so this anecdotal evidence may need to be taken with a larger grain of salt than normal.

Also, these are guys who are still (I am assuming) going to vote mostly GOP down-ticket. Even if Hillary puts up big numbers, I wonder if the coattail effect will be as large as her margin of victory would otherwise cause one to predict.

I can just imagine how his rulings would read.

That makes perfect sense, and we've all heard Republicans criticize Trump, but the polls also consistently show that Sanders does MUCH better against Trump than Clinton. We have to take those polls with a grain of salt too, but I think the evidence shows that however many Republicans will vote for Clinton instead of Trump are outnumbered by the amount of Sanders supporters who will vote for Trump. I haven't figured out who these people are whose preference goes Sanders - Trump - Clinton, but I am seeing a lot of my liberal facebook friends pitching a plan where individuals from countries who are hostile to homosexuality should be banned from the U.S. unless they denounce those anti-gay polices. That's where the far left reaches the far right, I guess.

I think that's just a factor of Sanders still being in the race. A lot of Sanders' fans are going to try to say they'll vote Trump or sit at home, so the polling numbers for Sanders v. Trump looks better and they can try their quixotic attempt to get the superdelegates to switch by saying Sanders is better for the general.

Those numbers will likely be far different after the conventions.

Yeah, the grain of salt is well taken, and I'd say the same about my own experiences. I had a co-worker who was obnoxiously conservative (like, he admitted to me at one point that he trusted Republican governance more than Democratic, even if it took shenanigans to get that Republican governance - the end mattered more than the means) say flat out that he would not vote for Donald Trump. He'd come around on the idea of voting for Bernie Sanders, but Trump/Clinton he was just going to sit out entirely because he couldn't stomach either one. That's one voter lost that Trump is going to have to dig up somewhere else.

I had two other co-workers who appeared to lean conservative, but were planning to vote for Clinton because of Trump's behavior toward women (both were female co-workers).

Personal experience has little bearing on the larger picture, but enough anecdotal stories and it starts to pile up.

Yeah, While we're still days out from the Orlando shooting, so I'm not sure that it's baked into the polls yet, the numbers have definitely shifted toward Clinton.

National poll: Hillary Clinton up 12 percentage points on Donald Trump - POLITICO

Clinton 49, Trump 37, Johnson 9

Poll: Clinton Eats Away at Trump's Lead Among Men, White Voters - NBC News

Clinton 49, Trump 42

Considering the kicking that Trump is taking for his pat on the back tweets, I wonder if it will lengthen (spoiler alert: I hope it does)

9% is pretty good for a libertarian candidate.

that'll probably translate into 0.9% in November

Sadly yes, but who will that 8.1% of the vote go to?

I'd be stunned if Trump ends up lower than 40%. We're just too polarized a country.

Newt goes full Senator McCarthy.

(you never go full Senator McCarthy)

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/politi...ies-committee/

Someone live tweeted a Trump rally.

edit: https://storify.com/case_face/a-trum...-here-is-palpa

Wow.

I'm sure these rallies have bad elements but that sounds almost completely made up.

This post helps explain why, though you come across as intelligent, your political posts quite often seem completely out of left field to me. If your response is to think this is made up, the I suspect that you are extremely tone deaf to the mood of the great unwashed in Thai country.

Thai Country Restaurant - Home

Season 5 of Eastbound and Down?

There's a lot of "Oh, that's not real" going around on Facebook. Trump not paying his debts to venues he has rallies at. Oh, that's not real.

Pretty much. In general, I completely disregard anything RM has to say in political posts.

On the flip side, I think the person I enjoy most in these threads is molson. IIRC, he's been frustrated at times with discussions here, but for me personally, he usually has a well-reasoned, well-written angle on things I hadn't fully considered, and it gives me something more to think about.

Yeah, I read that article this morning too. It's incredible that when they say they want a country free from PC, where they can say what they want. What they really want is a country where they are free to say and act as racist as they like, free from any consequenses and more than that, where it's approved to say such things by the most powerful man in the country.

I didn't know wanting to stymie the regressives of the left is considered racist since PC encompasses much more than just race. As a guy who just graduated from college nothing pisses me off more than the liberal regressives. The shit I see on my Facebook newsfeed pisses me off a lot sometimes coming mostly from females from the retarded Tumblr circlejerk.

It's thanks to them and the stupid media that Trump is where he is today. No such thing as bad publicity and they just kept giving him attention.

Yep, the things people on Tumblr say would definitely be the number one thing that's wrong with the country today. Never thought of it like that, but great point. I'd also suppose based on your demeanor and post history that all these females who post 'retarded' things you hate are people you have many real-world interactions with and would be incredibly dismayed if you were to unfriend them.

Funny that you call them "regressives on the left," when the right is actually campaigning on a platform to wipe out anything that happened in the last 8 years.

As a guy who just graduated from college, it sounds like you still have a lot to learn and think about. It's okay. We were all there once. As scary as it sounds, I graduated college 20 years ago now and I've learned a lot since then. Perspective and real life experience matter. Good luck with your journey!

There seems to be this sense among the anti-Trumpers that his followers will abandon him if only they see who he really is.

But what has he been hiding? What about Trump's approach thusfar would make you think that that people who love him enough to attend his rally wouldn't be exactly like this?

That would be true 4-6 years ago when social media was no where near as powerful as it is today. It takes a few retweets which automatically posts to Facebook, then a few shares, then it spreads like crazy.

I'm not going to vote for Trump no matter what because he's an idiot and not qualified but the sadistic side of me is enjoying the butthurt regressives are having.

The mistake all of the republican candidates made against Trump since day 1 was fighting him based on policy. Had one of them just called him out and attacked him (excluding Jeb) he would've never had a shot.

Yes great post and was exactly what I was thinking.

Umm ...

Was that supposed to be sarcasm or well-intentioned? Honest question.

It's usually the other way around since you know...most college students are or become liberal.

If that includs the Citizen's United and FISA court rulings, I might be interested.

Well the source of the tweets is a diehard Sanders supporter who does nothing but tweet about how evil everyone else is. And the event he witnessed just seems to conveniently hit every stereotype. I'd think the same thing if it was a diehard Trump supporter talking about how he went to a Sander rally and they talked about sending capitalists to the Gulag while wearing their Che Guevara shirts burning American flags as people sold copies of the Communist Manifesto outside.

I'm just skeptical of what extreme partisans say these days. Both sides are looking for validation and attention. We have fake hate crimes, hoaxes, and massive disinformation being disseminated. Not sure why it's crazy to be skeptical of a random extreme partisan portraying a Trump rally in such cartoonish terms.

Jon with the thread win :)

And by "8 years" you mean "8 decades". :D


Yeah, total LOL moment. :D Thread is only downhill from here.

"Like crazy." You think the average voter has even heard of Tumblr or Twitter? As has been mentioned, a little perspective goes a long ways.

I don't think it's made up, but I'm not sure how much of that is Trump and how much is geography. I do think you'd see more confederate flags at a Democratic rally in Greensboro than a Trump one in Massachusetts or Chicago. Just like the uber-progressive Sanders supporters probably aren't showing up as much in your facebook feed as they are in someone like mine who grew up in and went to college in Massachusetts. Yeah, technological advances and ease of travel have made the country a lot more homogeneous, but there are still pretty drastically different cultures.

Perhaps not, "as much," but I am fully aware, purely from my FB feed, that Bernie won California. ;)

Allegedly there are over 50 million Americans on Twitter, so yeah.

I'd be shocked if the average voter hasn't heard of Twitter. Cable news will sometimes even quote tweets.

The person who live tweeted the rally wrote it up fully in an article for The New Republic:

American Horror Story | New Republic

Oh, so half of America watches cable news now, and not only watches it but sees something somebody may have tweeted being discussed and makes the distinction that it's something from a social media site and not just a quote or press release?

Cable news, ESPN. I'm sure there are some elderly out there who haven't, but you'd have to be actively avoiding electronic media not to at this point.

Tumblr I'd certainly buy. That's a weird fringe/cultish one in my experience. Facebook, Twitter, instagram are the 3 that a large majority knows, with snapchat having higher market penetration under 21, but very few over the age of 30 having heard of it.

Yes.

ISiddiqui: OMG did you see when Hillary said 'delete your account' to Trump on Twitter? It was some hilarious ownage.

Average American: [blank stare]

ISiddiqui: You know, Twitter? Where people send out tweets that everyone else can read (unless it's a direct message, but you and the other person both have to be following each other for that to happen in the first place), and then people can like your tweets and retweet them to their followers.

Average American: OK, sure. Yeah I guess that's what they're talking about with Twitter on the news.

I have literally not run into anyone in 2016 who hasn't heard of Twitter. When I mention Twitter, everyone knows what I mean.

We've heard of it, at least 10-20 percent of us have ... just very few of us can figure out how (or why) to use it.

*This was actually a mini-topic I saw on Facebook a couple days ago, basically 35 & up, it's beyond virtually all of us.

From what I can gather from news reports, if you use Snapchat and you are a hot female teacher, it means you are banging at least one of your students.

And from the way you tell it, every Bernie Sanders supporter you've run into is now voting for Trump because they are all closet anarchists or something. I already know the people you interact with do not form a very representative sample of America as a whole. Does everyone you run into think Game of Thrones is the best show on TV right now, or are they bigger fans of Veep?

For someone who liked to talk about "liberal smugness," the failure to recognize that the majority of people have much bigger concerns than what went viral on political Twitter (and even among Twitter users in America, #LyricsThatHaveToBeShouted and the France-Albania soccer match are the most-discussed trends at the moment - I don't have to go out on much of a limb to guess that a good chunk of the people posting their favorite song lyrics in the middle of the afternoon on a summer weekday are not going to be 18 years old by November 8) is pretty rich.

edit with bonus fleregram:

The circles were getting too small but the next one was going to be "people who think that some random meme on Twitter that got 1000 RTs has some kind of sway on political discourse in America."

I guess people use snapchat to send pictures of their bewbs or stuff

I simply can't comprehend this nonsense that most Americans don't know what Twitter is and weird crappy diagrams don't really help with that. Our local homeless ministry is on Twitter (granted they only tweet once a month, but still).

And interestingly enough it does seem indeed that most Americans DO know what Twitter is:
From and Edison Survey done back in 2010

So when the news quotes Twitter, and especially in the 2016 race, where Donald Trump's Twitter feed has become almost nightly news, people know what the Hell it is. Saying otherwise just shows that you are a moron.

Of course the original post indicated that the Tweets end up on Facebook eventually (and they do) and then get shared. Are you next going to assert that people don't know what Facebook is?

In fairness on that point though, how many of them think they have some vague idea what it is versus how many of them actually know what it is? Or ever see anything from it?


re: "nightly news" -- did you know that only 4.5% of adults 25-49 watched an evening network news show last week? And if you add the entirety of cable news networks prime time, the number is still in single digits?

And even in markets with fantastic high-performing local evening news programs, the percentage never really gets over 25%?

As of Sept 2014, Pew Research found the following usage stats for social media
As of September 2014:

71% of online adults use Facebook
23% of online adults use Twitter

Heard of != knowing what it is. Those are two completely separate things.

On the other hand, you don't necessarily have to have an account, access their site/app, or even know remotely what it is to be inundated with Twitter content. It's served up second-hand in just about every medium these days, from other sites on the web constantly & directly embedding content, to television news/entertainment/political shows quoting tweets, it's snuck into advertising (particularly movie reviews), and even all the way into the local indie fishwrap that I'll grab while waiting for a sandwich.

I don't have to actively seek out content from the hottest twitter stars of the day, because some aggregator/site/blog will fool me into clicking on a monetized link using an intentionally vague or misleading headline, and the Daily Mail, TMZ, ESPN, DailyKos, FreeRepublic or any number of other sites will proceed to force feed it to me. I still won't know who the hell they are when I'm done, but I might be practically forced to process their thoughts.

Are we talking about Twitter, the Constitution, or the holy book of your choice?

Don't troll.

It's fucking tedious.

I'm not wrong.

Definitely not wrong.

You try way, way too hard.

The phrasing was "you think the average voter has heard of Twitter?".

One of the issues here is how many persuadable voters are really being reached via political twitter?

If you frequent political twitter, that means you like politics. Which means that you have probably already picked a side. And that you are already planning to vote.1. Political Twitter is great for arguments. But I am not sure who's minds are really being changed.

It reminds me of something I read about the outsized view of daytime cable news that Washington insiders have. Folks who work in politics have TVs with FoxNews, CNN, etc. on in the background all day. And they work trying to get stories pushed on those networks. So they are very interested and concerned with the impact of the news coverage.

When, in reality, the number of persuadable voters who watch daytime cable news probably numbers under 100 at any given time. If you choose CNN over a Law & Order re-run at 3 in the afternoon, you probably already know who you are voting for.

1. I know that there are people who follow politics strongly who are pure independents. But they are rare. Just like there are people who passionately follow a sport but don't have a favorite team. They exist. But they are uncommon.

Those stories act as seeds though to spread the message through word of mouth. If someone sees a story about Obama or Hillary on Fox News, the odds of someone spreading that information to their friends, family, co-workers, internet message boards aren't insignificant I don't think.

Can you guys take this twitter war to Twitter, please?

OK. This makes some sense. So maybe the game is that a lot of stuff is thrown at the wall in political twitter, facebook, etc. And the vast majority of it just gets shared among like minded folks and forgotten in 48 hours.

But sometimes a story/meme/idea/whatever that was nurtured there (or on cable news) gets through and breaks into the mainstream. President Obama's "Cling to guns and religion" and the "God Damn America" comments of his pastor come to mind. Romney's 47% comments and Rubio's debate performance also would seem to qualify. Oh, and the Dean Scream might be the biggest one of these regarding cable news.

So most of political twitter is just the choir preaching to itself. But it is still an essential part of a campaign because that is where potential election-changing events are nurtured, an unpredictable few of which will catch on and become mainstream.

I think so, yes.

Which is for those who post per month. A lot of people don't particularly notice Twitter unless there is a major news story developing and then Twitter lights up.

And I think all of us who use Facebook know of Tweets that get shared onto Facebook.

If you look at the original post, it was saying (paraphrasing) Tweets gets shared, retweeted, then shared on Facebook, shared again and suddenly its everywhere. So even if you think, oh, only 23% use Twitter, if it gets shared to Facebook, that's 71%. And in the interim it gets reported - cable news is just one place, it's on internet news sites as well... and even more, its on internet entertainment sites. And beyond that, just about every popular show has hastags they promote, and sometimes ghosted on the bottom right of the screen, and I'm guessing most people know what that's for.

Remember the whole Kanye is $53mil in debt thing that exploded all over the entertainment media (mostly by folks who had schadenfreude, of course). That started with a tweet Kanye put up in the context of his The Life of Pablo release. It just exploded from there.

And what I'm saying is that the majority know only in the vaguest sense. And, honestly, notice even less.


And, to use that example, what I'm getting at is -- even with this example -- the large majority of people didn't notice this "explosion" at all, or if they did it was simply to briefly mock Kanye.

Or at least that's true with the ones over the age of 30. And that's still the majority of the country (not to mention the majority of those who will actually vote in November).

Indeed people used it briefly mock Kanye. But people also read a bunch of these entertainment sites or watch those entertainment shows. I know it was all over TMZ, for one, and I think they even talked about it on The View. Those vehicles tend to reach a number of folks.

Yep. And to think, all of this came from a post where I was making fun of someone who thought that whatever the fuck people may be posting to Tumblr that then possibly gets shared and retweeted and then shared again on Facebook is the worst thing that's happening in this country today :lol:

If Twitter meant anything to the average voter, Donald Trump would be crying in the corner right now because of all the times John Oliver or some other person epically pwn3d him online in a viral meme or video. That's not the real world.

I love nol's diagram. Much love.

My internet goes out for an entire day and I come back to read average voters arguing about Twitter on my phone.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Bad options.... Seen a plethora of videos of Trump supports getting beat up at a TRUMP rally. Could probably write pages on both so will list their good qualities as I see them.

1) For the last 5 years or so I've wanted a president that wasn't a career politician. So this is a plus for Trump for me.

2) Trump does not owe anybody favors. Even some republicans are afraid of him getting elected. Can't control him and they are afraid of change.

Dipping yourself in battery acid is also change.

edit: I wasn't trying to make a personal attack, but a "negative change for the sake of change isn't a good idea" argument. Just realized that it could be taken completely wrong.

He owes hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign entities. He definitely owes them favors.

You realize the Oliver takedown was on Youtube, right? And Trump's Twitter posting is quite prolific (and has got 9mil followers). It's the most immediate and common way he engages with his supporters. Are you just upset because YOU don't get all the 'new fangled' social things? ;)

Even if you're living in 2001 and still have a Yahoo email account, and never use twitter (like me), you see references to the trendy tweets of the day on Yahoo.com, or whatever other newsish site you stumble around.

No, it's that I do understand them all too well but also am from middle America and don't have my head up my own ass, so I'm aware that there are an enormous number of voters (I don't have a political science degree but am pretty sure that old people tend to vote at a much higher rate than does the 18-34 demographic that Twitter and everything else like that is desperate for) for whom this stuff simply doesn't matter :)

I understand Twitter well enough to know that it skews much younger and more African-American than Facebook and cable news - did you know that? That plays into my opinion that no matter how personally entertaining I may find the Trump-skewering meme or thinkpiece du jour, in the scheme of things it is not reaching many undecided voters. That also applies in the opposite direction. Even if I see something I disagree with or think is just flat-out stupid, I know it's either a relatively minor annoyance that doesn't deserve to be mentioned among the biggest problems in America today or an echo of something that was a problem long before social media ever existed.

I mean, 9 million followers. Once you get rid of bots, duplicate accounts, people involved in journalism, and people who just are following him to crack jokes on anything he says, where does that get you? And then to say in an electorate of over a hundred million people that it reflects the average voter, come on. In fact, here's a nice little article I came across that illuminates my current view, which is that when someone throws out something like "surely you must realize Trump has 9 million followers," it indicates they have a desire to be seen as a hip person who knows what the youths are up to on social media without necessarily having a very deep understanding of it: Inside Donald Trump's Twitter-bot Fan Club

You don't think the older viewers who catch O'Reilly or read the local newspaper don't see the references to Trump's twitter comments (especially when the Republican leadership is having to address it)? C'mon. You are just being ridiculous now. You seem to think middle America is in this weird bubble, where their news sources don't acknowledge Twitter. It's ludicrous.

I'd call my step-mom pretty representative for that class of voter. 60'ish, works part time, middle class. She occasionally finds her way onto facebook, has heard of twitter, but never used it, and sure as hell hasn't heard of tumblr.

It's not that controversial a statement to say the average voter (which skews older) is less social media savvy than pretty much everyone you come into contact with, Isiddiqui.

Now if your goal is to just prove nol made a semantic mistake, by all means, tilt away.

Except this means you have a President who doesn't understand how the government operates, someone who thinks that the Supreme Courts conducts criminal investigations.

But does she read news or watch TV that references Twitter? Has she heard of Trump claiming "I was right" about Muslims (basically) after the Orlando bombing? Because that came directly from Twitter. Most people didn't actually see it on Twitter - they saw it on cable news or their local newspapers reporting on it or other politicians referencing it.

Edit: For example, I've never seen a Trump tweet directly on Twitter. I see them when they are shared on Facebook, reported on by CNN, reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution or the New York Times, mentioned to me by coworkers who saw them on whatever news they receive.

Again, if your game here is semantics, tilt away at the windmill. Otherwise, I think the horse is already dead.

Believing in climate change, believing vaccinations are a good thing, and believing Obama was born in the US are 3 things that set the bar as low as it can possibly be for me as far as presidential candidates go. Trump fails all 3 of those.

There's absolutely no way I can even consider voting for a climate change denier that believes vaccines cause autism and that Obama may have been born in another country. That doesn't even get into the stupid things that come out of his mouth and his other stances.

Change simply for the sake of change is the worst reason for change.

What you seem to be ignoring is how relatively few people: watch the news, read a local newspaper, etc etc, with any sort of actual frequency. It has reach in terms of "have you in the past 30 days" but on a daily basis (or even a weekdaily basis) the numbers are well below half.

And then you filter that down to what they actually catch.

There's some impact of Twitter out there, but you're GROSSLY overestimating it's impact on the majority of the population.

And THAT is "ludicrous".

I don't think so. I think people are vastly underestimating it's impact. Have you in the past 30 days is frequent enough, esp if every time you look at it there is a reference (and especially since media narrative has been driven by the next crazy thing Trump has said, the references are many).

Pretty much. What he's doing is the equivalent of looking at basketball Twitter and then expecting to go into a sports bar or barbershop and strike up a conversation about Tristan Thompson's win shares per 48 minutes. And then there's the fact that what people put on Twitter is, you know, curated from what they have actually said and thought before. It makes it easier for the media because they can just go on one site to get it rather than figure out what particular rally or press release it came from, but other than that it has no bearing on the actual message.


Right, and maybe I should have nipped that in the bud earlier by just saying "it's ridiculous to think the average person gives a fuck about Twitter" knowing how many people like to really go at me for semantics without addressing the actual point. But then again, that may have been too mean and condescending to say.

Your incredibly strange and unhinged ad hominems aside, generally speaking, what people put on Twitter usually isn't curated from what people have said or thought before. If anything they'll generally put it there first and then reference it later - especially so for politicians' first reactions to something (for example, what did news outlets go to for the Presidential candidates' reactions to the Orlando massacre?).

Holy shit, there are HOUSE Campaigns doing a better job at fundraising then Trump.

Comfortably Smug on Twitter: "Wow. Trump FEC numbers are AWFULLLLL https://t.co/6LQXEBwPey"

Trump campaign expenses in May, per @FEC report:
Hats: $208k
Online advertising: $115k
Data management: $48k
Communications consulting: $38k

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) June 21, 2016

Welcome to Trump Fortress 2.

And apparently 10% or so of all the campaign spending has gone to Trump owned businesses.

How American Politics Became So Ineffective - The Atlantic

I still think revoking the direct election of Senators would be a good thing too, but I'm an unapologetic elitist at this point.

A really good article and I agree. Middlemen and parties are good things, by dismantling their powers, we opened up the system to nuttiness.

Will Reporters Pay for Donald Trump’s Scotland Trip? - NYTimes.com




It may seem like a lot, but it's totally worth it when he can lock up the Latino vote by spending a few thousand to have Trump Grill make the perfect taco bowl.

I know it's Thinkprogress, but they have cites for what they are reporting about... this Trump payment to "Sterling Draper" just gets stranger and stranger:

The Weird Story Behind The Trump Campaign’s $35,000 Payment To ‘Draper Sterling’ | ThinkProgress

It looks like Lewandowski may have been fired because he was skimming money (The 'HQ', as it were, for "Draper Sterling" is very close to where Lewandowski is from).

A potential running mate for Trump perhaps?

Tennessee Congressional Candidate Has A Dream To 'Make America White Again'

That is awesome!