Republicans

[Brian Peacock]

If this were Europe, Trump would be the most popular leader ever

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

So you wish America was more like Europe eh?

[L'Emmerdeur]

Certain cheerleaders might latch onto the Fox News favorite Rasmussen results, but the average of current polls has US public perception of President Bogus at approx. 38% approve, 56% disapprove.

[pErvinalia]

Trump could not lead any European country. All those foreigners! Even the English!

But he could lead Russia! Many pussies to grab! Golden showers every weekend!

I don't think he'll be grabbing these Pussies...


Pussy Riot

[JimC]

We all know that Lak would be saying "I know me..."

[Tero]

Trump's Ryan problem:

4. Paul Ryan wants to cut entitlements.

Cutting entitlements has long been an obsession among a sizeable faction of Republicans, and House Speaker Paul Ryan is a sincere believer in the cause. Does Trump want to do this? No. He did not run on it—quite the opposite. But Ryan very much wants to do it. He believes he can harness the Trump tempest to sail the Ryan sloop, and he might be right.

In his own goofy way, Ryan seems to be willing to stake everything getting his priorities accomplished, which is surely a reason why he’s signaling that 2018 will be his last year in office. (It’s ironic, but fortunate, that Ryan’s Republican primary challenger, Paul Nehlen, has unmasked himself as an alt-right lunatic just as he might have had an opening.) Trump would probably love to swat away Paul Ryan, but the speaker of the House holds a lot of cards, and Ryan seems to play them better than people think.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12 ... es-in-2018

[Animavore]

Dumb. Dumbs.

[Tero]

Poor white folks vote for rich white folks since forever, or at least when blacks started to vote:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ory-216200

[Tero]

Cut tax to force cuts to social security and Medicare
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/ ... 2441809920

[Tero]

Millennials want 3rd party, Trump has just been bad for GOP for them

NBC News/GenForward polling found that millennials are generally mistrustful and disdainful of both parties and government. Sixty percent of poll respondents said they disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, and on the whole millennials don't think either party cares about people like them. Fifty-nine percent have a negative view of the GOP, while 42 percent have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party.

"If the 2017 Virginia election is any indication, millennials are paying attention, and the Republicans have a lot of work to do to get ready for that," said GOP strategist and MSNBC contributor Susan Del Percio.

Millennials want to see inclusive policies, Del Percio said, and that's "the opposite of the Trump brand right now in the GOP."

Another GOP strategist, Evan Siegfried, said millennials have proven elusive for Republicans — even before Trump.

"However, Trump has taken those preexisting problems and put them on steroids," Siegfried said, pointing to Trump's response to a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which the president blamed "both sides" for violence, his handling of DACA, and his call to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... he-n832961

[Seabass]

This is what happens when Republicans have their way.

North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy

In 2012 Elklit and I worked with Pippa Norris of Harvard University, who used the system as the cornerstone of the Electoral Integrity Project. Since then the EIP has measured 213 elections in 153 countries and is widely agreed to be the most accurate method for evaluating how free and fair and democratic elections are across time and place.

When we evolved the project I could never imagine that as we enter 2017, my state, North Carolina, would perform so badly on this, and other, measures that we are no longer considered to be a fully functioning democracy.

In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly free democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.

Indeed, North Carolina does so poorly on the measures of legal framework and voter registration, that on those indicators we rank alongside Iran and Venezuela. When it comes to the integrity of the voting district boundaries no country has ever received as low a score as the 7/100 North Carolina received. North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project.

[Scot Dutchy]

Democracy cannot be used to describe any part of the American electoral system.

[Brian Peacock]

It's not that bad - at least the people who wrote the rules were voted into office.

[Scot Dutchy]

How and by whom?

[Brian Peacock]

By elections, and I don't have their names.

[pErvinalia]

Hillary. Bill. Hillary. Hillary...