RayDog

538 had an article that the liberal wing of the party which is also the most active is increasingly for Warren. The moderates and conservatives favor Biden but they are still working off name recognition. I don't think Biden has any upside over the next 5 months as more moderate Democrats learn more about the candidates.

There are so many Cook PVI R+9 and R+10 districts that look like tossups or even tilt/lean Democratic districts in Texas. Even the guys in R+12 and R+13 districts appear to be getting scarred. The PVI is a trailing indicator since it factors in 2012 and 2016 and does not factor in the 6% drop in Boomer and older voters from 2016 to 2020, not to mention demographic changes during that time, and the awakening of non-voting Democrats. It looks like the Republican gerrymandering could backfire even worse than I ever imagined. Flores won a PVI +12 district by 15.5%, which I suspect was due to support from Latinos. A white Trump GOPer might be looking at getting 51% of the vote in the 17th and eking out a 3 or 4 point win.I still don't see it going to the Democrats unless they find an exceptional candidate to run. Here is the rep, district, margin in 2018, PVI, winning percentage in 2018, age on 2021 birthday if potentially retirement age. Dan Crenshaw TX-2 7.2% R+11 Crenshaw 52.8% Van Taylor TX-3 10.0% R+13 Taylor 54.2% Ron Wright TX-6 7.7% R+9 Wright 53.1%, 68 in 2021 Michael McCaul TX-10 4.3% R+9 McCaul 51.1% Open (Flores) TX-17 15.5% R+12 Flores 56.8%, 67 in 2021 Chip Roy TX-21 2.8% R+10 Roy 50.2% Open (Olson) TX-22 4.9% R+10 Olson 51.4% Open (Hurd) TX-23 0.5% R+1 Hurd 49.2% Open (Marchant) TX-24 3.2% R+9 Marchant 51.6%, 70 in 2021 Roger Williams TX-25 8.7% R+11 Williams 53.5%, 72 in 2021 John Carter TX-31 2.9% R+10 Carter 50.6%, 80 in 2021 I should have included Cloud in the 27th. It is PVI R+13 but over 51% Latino.

Think what it will do for Russia and the Middle East.

2050 is not close given we need something working before 2030 and start construction. It has always been 30-40 years out during my lifetime, and my evaluation is that it is not viable at all, not without some sort of breakthrough that leads to a factor of 10 improvement in efficiency. Most researchers are working on incremental improvements not trying to find the 10x breakthrough we need. We also have to use lithium to make the tritium to fuel fusion reactors, the same lithium that is going into car batteries. For fusion to be viable we need to double the known lithium reserves or stop using lithium in batteries. We need excess neutrons from fusion reactions to convert lithium to tritium, so that is part of the efficiency problem on top of heat transfer and turbine efficiency issues. My plan is to figure out how to make electrons and protons without making antimatter as lots of energy should be available from that process whatever it is. I don't buy the idea that electrons and protons have existed for infinity, so we should be able to figure out how to make them. Unfortunately I don't have the resources to get my lab up and running at this moment.

I saw something earlier that Chip Roy was non-committal when asked if he was running, so yes, something weird is happening.

The district is 56% white 25% Latino and on 25% rural. If it wasn't so Aggie and the Latino vote so suppressed it could be competitive. Is their a popular Democratic Latino Aggie who could run?

I knew a lot of Irish when I lived in Bulgaria including one from Northern Ireland. They were all convinced that if the British put up a hard border the border guards would be killed.

I may give up on the US completely, not vote, and never go back.

We all have access to polling that shows 11 Republican Senators are vulnerable and 5 of those lean Democratic, ME, CO, AZ, IA, NC.

One thing I love about the green new deal is it will reduce oil and gas demand so much that it will destabilize Russia and hopefully bring an end to Putin.

Not when you can fire 3 rounds a second in semi-auto.

A 30 second google search would find dozens of articles based on the research going on at USC Australia going back to 2014. For anyone paying attention to climate science this was already public knowledge not requiring citation. For example I do not normally cite that Einstein derived E=mc^2. I do cite when I add that Poincare derived it 5 years earlier since few people are aware of that. Poincaré H., (1900) "La Théorie de Lorentz et le Principe de Réaction," Arch. Néerland. Sci. Ex. Nat. (2) 252–27830.

I wish they did a poll on how enthusiastic people are to vote for a candidate. I just don't see people being that enthusiastic to vote for Biden. Elections are about turnout and if you factor in turnout Biden may be the worst of the four.

The point is if they did poorly in 2014 they are vulnerable now, unless they had a big jump in popularity. Even if they won by 5 or 6 points they are vulnerable in today's environment.

I made a table of the potentially vulnerable Republican Senators and open positions. I included their winning percentage, loosing in McSally's case,the PVI and governor for the state noting that KY looks like it will flip in 2019. And I used their approval/disapproval numbers and Trumps net approval in their state from Morning Consult. Senator St Win% PVI Approval Trump Gov Martha McSally AZ 47.6L R+5 40/37 -7 R Dan Sullivan AK 48.0 R+9 44/29 -2 R Cory Gardner CO 48.2 D+1 37/37 -8 D Thom Tillis NC 48.8 R+3 33/35 -1 D Joni Ernst IA 52.1 R+3 42/38 -11 R David Perdue GA 52.9 R+5 48/26 +2 R Open KS 53.1 R+13 NA +5 D Open GA 54.8 R+5 NA +2 R Moscow Mitch KY 56.2 R+15 36/50 +15 D? John Cornyn TX 61.6 R+8 43/25 +6 R Susan Collins ME 68.5 D+3 45/48 -13 D

Said one seriously lazy poster.

That was another thing. There weren't any big mass shootings in the last few months leading up to the 2018 electron. It was almost like the would-be shooters were intentionally waiting until after the election.

I am very bullish on Texas flipping but it is still turnout dependent. I had Beto winning before the Kavanaugh hearings but losing after because of the huge increase in voter excitement among Republicans. I cannot predict if something like that will happen again this time to save the Republicans, and not everyone has Beto's charisma. The trends are very clear and I got my data from a study by PEW for 2020 and extrapolated to 2024.Check out the graph showing the percentages by generation. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/an-early-look-at-the-2020-electorate/ One interesting thing I noted is the Cook PVI is still partly based on 2016 and 2012. They basically assume that the Democratic to Republican ratios stay fixed with the generations, which we know isn't try. The Cook PVI is very much a lagging model. PEW's approach is more forward thinking. I tend to subtract 5 or 6 from Cook PVI numbers to reflect what PEW found. On the anecdotal side I am a young Boomer, but I find myself generally aligned with Millennials on a lot of things in politics. Based on my friends and acquaintances, younger boomers born roughly after 1960 tend to be more liberal, so Boomer voting tendencies may not be constant as older boomers die off. At least one can hope.

So pre-Limbaugh this wasn't happening. Correlation it causation?

I see Comey as an accidental hero in the end along with the Bernie Bros who voted for Trump. Yes, we have 4 disastrous years of Trump but 8 years if Hillary with Replublicans controlling both houses would not have led to major changes. Now there is a chance for Democrats to control the presidency and both houses for 8 to 20 years and things like the green new deal have a chance.

In the largest 10 counties the Democratic vote has gone up about 10% in 6 years from 2012 to 2018, (from roughly 50/50 to 60/40) so I can say with confidence that the new voters are trending Democrat and they are turning out. I used the same percentage as 2018 because I don't know how big the Beto bump was. If he was merely on the trendline Democrats can expect to win the 10 biggest counties 62% to 38% or thereabouts in 2020. That alone should close the 215000 vote gap. As mentioned in another thread nationally the Boomer and older voters were 49% of the vote in 2016 and likely will be around 43% in 2020 and 37% in 2024. Texas is actually a relatively young state with young non-voters. But even so the math does not work for Republicans.

Per PEW Gen Z will be 10% of eligible voters in 2020 compared to Silent Gen and older at 9%. Boomers, X and millenials are all similar at 28%, 27% and 26%. If Gen Z shows up and votes things will be very ugly for Republicans. By 2024 the Boomers will be 25% and the silent and older group less than 7%. The Republican party will be strictly regional at that point until they reinvent themselves.

I live in a country where 150 politicians were supposedly murdered in 2018, so removal from office is still serious business some places.

Some numbers starting with Beto coming within 215,000 with 8.3 million total votes in 2018. There were 9 million in 2016 and 8 million in 2012 so 10 million or more are expected in 2020. In the 10 largest counties he won by 939,235. The vote was 59% to 40% in his favor in those counties with 59% of the total vote and 71% of the Democratic vote. In the 30 largest counties he won by 626,737 and the vote was 54% to 45% in Beto's favor with 79% of the total vote and 88% of the democratic vote coming from the 30 biggest counties. The 2 million+ new voters in 2020 that did not vote in 2018 will mostly come from the 10 largest counties with a smaller percentage from the next 20 largest counties. The rural vote is effectively reached its maximum already. Even if the voting percentages stay the same those 2 million would vote about 57% to 42% democratic. That would be a net gain of 300,000 votes versus 2018. If the percentages favor Democrats more strongly or the Republican enthusiasm does not get a Kavanaugh-like bump in 2020 it could swing more in Democrats favor. If the Democrats pick a candidate with the personality of a turnip, it could go in the Republican's favor.

There were articles from Australia last week that they added a certain type of seaweed to the diet of cattle that kills the microbes that make the methane. Cattle actual like the seaweed too. I did not see anything about how the seaweed effects the taste of the beef. Australian beef often tastes terrible. I don't know why but I suspect it is something they eat down there.