2042

Official response from Fox regarding Trump’s boycott yesterday:

At 11:45am today, we canceled Donald Trump’s scheduled appearance on The O’Reilly Factor on Thursday, which resulted in Mr. Trump’s subsequent tweet about his ‘boycott’ of FOX News. The press predictably jumped to cover his tweet, creating yet another distraction from any real issues that Mr. Trump might be questioned about. When coverage doesn’t go his way, he engages in personal attacks on our anchors and hosts, which has grown stale and tiresome. He doesn’t seem to grasp that candidates telling journalists what to ask is not how the media works in this country.

Today:

“Fox News Chairman & CEO Roger Ailes and Donald Trump spoke this morning and plan to have a meeting next week to discuss their differences of opinion regarding Fox’s coverage of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. Ailes will be joined by senior Fox editorial executives,” the Fox representative said in a statement shared with The Hill.

“Mr. Trump believes he has been treated unfairly in certain instances. FOX News has held every candidate in this race to the highest journalistic standards throughout our coverage. We believe a candid meeting about our differences is required and that any misunderstandings can be handled without compromising those standards,” the representative added.

Sounds like Fox is going to blink.

2043

Of course they will. sigh Even though I strongly dislike Fox News, I loved that they had the spine to tell him to shove off. Capitulation here, well, not like my opinion of them could have gone lower.

2044

Meh. A feud between Trump and whatever Fox personality they care to throw up is good for Trump, good for ratings, and good for the “anchor’s” journalistic street-cred. I’m actually surprised they gone back to the well so often.

2045

I know this board is overwhelmingly democrat and you love to pat yourselves on backs about this crazy circus going on right now - I’m independent & love to throw sticks at both sides, so can I take you back a year to Nov 2014 where the Republicans picked up 8 seats in the Senate (54 to 46) and 13 seats in the house to further their majority (247 to 188) and you can explain again how the Republican party is imploding?

I could go back to the election of 2012 and you were all doing the same thing then, patting yourselves on your backs & hi-fiving, only to see any gains completely wiped out in 2014.

It’s going to be real interesting to see if the presidential fiasco going on now affects the house & senate where the real stalemate is at right now.

The simple fact (and real problems) for America right now - from my independent lens:

  1. With a dismal 15% approval rating, roughly 90% of house and 80% of senate get re-elected. It’s like everyone says it’s a problem, but it’s not my problem.

  2. We need all states to have blanket primaries. Only 3 states have this so far. Not allowing 35-40% of the electorate even a voice to pick who they will vote for in November is a disgrace. (source:http://ballotpedia.org/Blanket_primary). I don’t count open primaries because being forced to a particular ticket is not the solution.

So, if somehow someone coalesces from this smorgasbord of crazy and somehow gets elected, the Republicans will again own everything and they will be free to plunder. If a democrat wins, the stalemate continues (assuming the historical re-election rates remain the same).

2046

The real thing that is so irksome about that is the reason the Republicans control the house: gerrymandering. At a national level they do face trouble if they don’t start adapting. Their majority is done through corruption and cheating the system, just look at the house allocations for Pennsylvania versus voter rates.

Honestly I’d love for it not to be such a hardlocked two party system, but the mechanics of voting, and a press corps that has abandoned their duty to inform the public (in favor of sensationalization and entertainment), effectively means these two parties are all the choice we get.

2047

Yeah, I get the feeling that fixing the system would require some benevolent dictatorship … which would then of course get voted out of office and we’d go back to the same mess.

2048

Yep. Repubs should cleanly win midterms, when Democrats (pardon me: young people, black people, hispanic people, and women) don’t vote, until at least 2022 when the next census’s possibility of redistricting could feasibly take effect. Since said Republicans also hold a lot of power in state governments, it’s not even guaranteed then.

Democrats shouldn’t have too hard of a time snagging presidencies as long as they don’t accidentally run charisma-free, lying moderate warhawks like Hillary.

. . . oh.

2049

It’s easy to blame Republican victories on cheating, so two points to the contrary: 1. Republicans hold 31 governors’ offices and those can’t be gerrymandered; and 2) if the congressional district has been gerrymandered Republican, it’s because the Republicans control the state legislature. And, perish forbid the thought on this board, but Democratically controlled legislatures have done plenty of gerrymandering in their favor. Just look at a map of Illinois congressional districts. That’s the 4th Illinois congressional district below.

Your right that demographically they face real trouble if they don’t adapt in the near future, but it’s not like actual voters haven’t voted Republican.

2050

Of all the constitutional amendments we need, election reform (including the abolition of gerrymandering and the negation of the insane Citizens United decision) is I think the most important. But for that reason it’s also the least likely to happen, because if it did it would imply there was no more problem with it anymore. It’s a catch-22.

2051

I never said Democrats haven’t gerrymandered, but it is pure bullshit to pretend they do it on the same scale.

Cehck out the gerrymandering rates here.

Wow, Illinois the only one out of line by more than 1 for Dems (at 1.7), yeah. That’s the same as Pennsylvania being nearly 4 over.

2052

Si.

HQkfR7E.png800×475

2012 election results by county.

Republicans are popular across broad stretches of the United States.

2053

Oh certainly, but you see that little blue wedge on the southwest corner of Lake Michigan? The one in deep blue? That’s Cook County, where I live. That county has 5.24 million people, or basically equivalent to (within about 30k) Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Deleware, and Montana combined. More than all but 21 states individually. In one little county.

So, sure, based on geograpy the Republicans dominate. They dominate large swaths of lightly populated land. But when you count actual people, Democrats hold more votes.

2054

The Democrats hold more potential votes. The reason Republicans win in states like Wisconsin is because the Republicans get a better turnout, aka voter commitment. What that map shows is that the reason the Democrats don’t gerrymander at the same rate as Republicans is because they can’t.

2055

Sure, but our system isn’t designed to reward that kind of dense support. You can’t take the house by winning just urbanized districts. You have to be competitive nationally.

2056

LOL. Thanks, made my day ;-)

2057

That was a fascinating article. Thanks for the link.

2058

That came as no surprise. In 2014, Democrats were defending Senate seats that they won in the 2008. Democrats made huge Senatorial gains in 2008, and nobody expected them to keep all those seats when the terms expired.

In contrast, in 2010 Republicans did unexpectedly well in the Senate. Now those seats are all on the line, and I think it’s reasonable to expect the pendulum to shift and Democrats to take a few of them back, for a small net Senatorial gain.

2059

Comparing population vs land area isn’t really relevant, which is what that does. Some of those entire states are one basically one district.

I mean the blue areas of say Iowa have more population than the red areas, even though the red area is “larger”.

2060

Yeah the population in west Oregon and Washington dwarf what’s in the eastern part of those states and maps like this don’t separate the extremes from the moderates. You wouldn’t see a Republican trying to keep a seat in those states running over there praising Kim Davis… but Republicans have held seats in all the Democratically dominant West States.

2061

Here’s a twisty, deformed map that shows party voting by county, scaled to represent the vote count in each (2012 presidential).