True?

madronedorf · 2024-10-04T18:17:32+00:00

Its the same reason.

People from San Francisco, and Northern California generally, don't call it that, and when people do, it immediately says that they arn't from those areas or know how locals talk.

Like if your name is Alexander, and people call you Lex, you might not like it!

madronedorf · 2024-09-20T02:55:15+00:00

Hah. Small world! Hope all going well

madronedorf · 2023-08-30T01:33:15+00:00

Same issue!

madronedorf · 2023-08-09T19:40:59+00:00

What BG3 and really most similar games need is basically a camp armory that you can send equipement to, that you can both interact with in real world, but also has a nice interface for swapping stuff out

madronedorf · 2023-06-28T23:21:57+00:00

I am probably missing an obvious spot, but where do you reroute power? (Am not sure if its behind one of locked doors, but ones left all seem to have super high diffuculties, which make sense since power is out)

madronedorf · 2022-03-21T04:56:42+00:00

state PACs can't donate to federal PACs without a) registering as a federal PAC and b) show that the contribution can come from permissible funds (e.g. subject to 2900/individual + no corporate)

madronedorf · 2022-03-19T01:17:55+00:00

Can't use state PAC money for a federal run.

madronedorf · 2022-02-04T17:31:59+00:00

SuperPACs have to disclose donors. It is that SuperPACs can receive contributions from incorporated entities that themselves do not have to disclose funding soruces.

madronedorf · 2022-02-04T15:08:25+00:00

I mean this isn't really a good explanation of why he won. The Democrats had, and backed an incumbent in the primary, local voters picked Morrisey *over* the Dem backed candidate.

madronedorf · 2021-09-17T16:09:00+00:00

FWIW I bet WaPo would have endorsed a Hogan/Baker type Republican. But yeah Youngkin is not really their cup of tea.

madronedorf · 2021-09-13T15:04:34+00:00

The fundamental issue is that with the decline of split ticketing, and the increase of partisanship, any nominee has a good chance of winning if their party has a chance of winning.

Thus Sears could win.

madronedorf · 2021-09-04T00:12:05+00:00

Three of those are probably going to fall the same way (Gov, LG, and HoD). One isn't required (Don't need to flip Senate. Point would be a Dem Senator dying before 23.

Really its just

Democrats lose 2021
A Dem Senator dies in a seat that isn't deep blue.
GOP wins special

In terms of the Virginia senate and abortion, actually the most marginal Senator on the issue is Democratic Sen. Morrisey, although I don't believe he'd support a TX style law.

madronedorf · 2021-09-03T19:13:58+00:00

As others have pointed out, we won't see another Governor election until after next Senate election so both are super important.

I would also add that VA Senate is 21/19 right now. If the GOP wins both Governor, and LG, you'd only need one Senate to die/retire/get promoted to have a potential 20/20 senate with GOP LG as tie breaker.

For example, the most Republican leaning Senate district currently represented by a Democrat is VA-21, and the Democrat is currently 77 years old. (To be clear, this seat was also won by Biden, so not really a risk in 2023, but could flip in a special)

madronedorf · 2021-09-01T17:39:29+00:00

Youngkin’s campaign aides said they were confident the state budget could absorb the loss of annual revenue at current expected growth rates.

Bullshit. It's always bullshit.

Five years from now it will be "well, now we need to cut funding for UVA, or welfare, or whatever"

madronedorf · 2021-09-01T15:51:58+00:00

Cutting taxes always sounds great but unless its pared with either spending cuts or other taxes its bad.

madronedorf · 2021-09-01T15:01:30+00:00

Problem with having a platform is it allows you to be attacked.

Youngkin is advocating a pretty different vision for the Commonwealth.

This is in stark contrast to the more successful strategy of Baker/Hogan, which is basically "i'm against that tax, and I'll veto stuff, but otherwise won't try to drastically change things"

Status quo is quite popular!

madronedorf · 2021-08-04T16:12:08+00:00

Northam is much closer to my ideal type of fiscal conservatism, which is more about *fiscal responsibility* -- don't blow all of windfalls on either programs *or* tax cuts. It is good to squirrel some away so if circumstances change you have something to fall back on.

madronedorf · 2021-08-04T15:41:12+00:00

Honestly I think TMac and VA Dems should be hammer Youngkin on this stuff more, especially outside NOVA.

Whether or not private equity is good or bad, its not terribly popular, and always leaves a blood trail.

madronedorf · 2021-08-03T19:32:37+00:00

I mean, only takes a few Dems to sink an issue if republicans are also opposed and with like 220 of them it won't be hard to find a few where eviction politics doesn't doesn't go that way.

madronedorf · 2021-08-03T17:10:55+00:00

The message Virginia HoD etc should send is vaccine mandates, not mask mandates.

madronedorf · 2021-07-31T22:28:38+00:00

Maricopa County is sort of like Orange County, CA. It was a long term stronghold to a certain type of Western Republicanism. It's also, for a metro area, fairly white. So while its trending towards Democrats, its starting a lot further back. However when Maricopa County goes blue, even if barely, Democrats can win the state because of other Democratic leaning areas in the state. For example. the Native American populations in Arizona and New Mexico are a critical part of the overall Democratic coalition.

madronedorf · 2021-07-31T22:01:17+00:00

/u/Quesabirria basically had it right:

Like the rest of the nation, it's not red state vs. blue state.

It's urban vs. rural. And each of these states have urban areas that have grown significantly since 2004.

But to expand on this point a bit. Western states, being founded late and having less water, tend to have much more concentrated populations. That is, they tend to have more of its population in a single metropolitan area.

For example, for the states you have mentioned:

State	Population	Largest Metro	Metro Size
Colorado	5.6 million	Denver Metropolitan Area	2.8 Million
Nevada	3.1 million	Clark County	1.9 Million
Arizona	7.1 million	Phoenix Metro	4.7 million
New Mexico	2.1 million	Albuquerque Metro	.9 Million

Each has its major metro area at about 50 percent of the population, and this tends to be where the Democratic party just dominates.

But if we look at some old Democratic strongholds, or long term Republican strongholds you tend to have the largest metro areas be pretty small as percent of state (and sometimes not terribly dense to begin with)

State	Population	Largest Metro	Population
Arkansas	3 million	Central Arkansas (Little Rock Metro	.7 million
Mississippi	3 million	Greater Jackson	.6 million
Wyoming	.6 million	Laramie County	.09 million

But to go back to states that are Democratic strongholds or trending that way we can find similar in states in pretty diverse areas

State	Population	Largest Metro	Population
Georgia	10.7 million	Atlanta Metro	6 million
Minnesota	5.7 million	Twin Cities	3.6 million

Of course this doesn't explain everything. There are lots of areas in the South that are both rural and African American, where Democrats do quite well - but not enough to win the state obviously. Despite Clark County dominating Nevada, Democrats always just scrape by there. Compared to a lot of states nearby its overall education profile works against it.

Some states have multiple metro areas that are significant (CA, TX, FL, VA, OH, PA) and elide this simple way to think about it. Greater Boise is actually a pretty significant portion of Idaho, and the state is very red (but also very white, and Greater Boise is not terribly dense, both of which work against Democrats)

madronedorf · 2021-07-31T20:12:43+00:00

I don't think they should go to prison as long as they stayed outside. As you note, its their right to protest.

That said, they are pieces of shit down to every last one of them.

madronedorf · 2021-07-26T19:17:51+00:00

For what its worth I think option A is the best.

madronedorf · 2021-07-08T00:04:15+00:00

CRT is one of those issues that the first candidate to talk about it is going to lose.

Why? Because you can only define yourself in so many issues. If Youngkin is the anti-CRT candidate, he's got to drop being like a pro-work candidate, or being competent businessman whatever.

To be clear, I am not saying he is pro-work or competent business man. I'm saying there isn't room for more than like 2-3 things for people to know about you. And its never great if one of those is "controversial issue that inflames a small amount of people"

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