[I split this off from the Russia Investigations thread so there was a place to talk about the 2018 midterms - VTF]

So how's Pennsylvania doing today?

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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

- Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Polls just closed a little while ago; Lamb has a big lead with 3% of precincts reporting, but that is meaningless. And, of course, this district won't even exist come November, and Lamb will be running in a much more Dem-friendly district. But a victory in this election would certainly encourage Democrats. Even a close loss would be an upset from where things started.

ETA: 19% reporting and Lamb is still up 58% to 42%.

EATA: But now with 95% reporting it is 50% to 49%, with Lamb leading by less than a thousand votes.

Latest: 49.9% to 49.5%, 104697 - 103779. Going down to the wire.

Now less than 500 votes. I think Lamb is going to lose. It's going to be close.

579 votes ahead with 100% precincts reporting, but there are still absentee ballots to be counted. Still mathematically possible for Saccone to win, but not likely. Plus, while there are no mandatory recounts for a special election, he can petition for one.

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

Five Thirty Eight says it's unlikely that the ballots remaining to be counted (200 absentees plus some provisional and overseas ballots) is greater than the current Lamb margin of 629 votes—meaning that even if Saccone got every one of the still-uncounted votes, Lamb has still won.

They also said that a recount is unlikely to move the numbers much, as most voting in this election was by touchscreen.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

And apparently the threshold for requesting a recount is white high, as there needs to be three voters in a single precinct who will swear they observed voting fraud or error.

Sent from my LG G6 using Tapatalk

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

I guess I'll be glad if the result holds up, but the margin was far too narrow for me to really feel good about it, even given the district's demographics.

But Dave, there was a swing from the Trump election of more than 20 points. This is huge even if Lamb somehow ends up losing. And there are 114 House districts less Republican than this one currently held by Republicans.

Democrats need 24 of those seats to take the House.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Not enough. It's like finding out you're only bleeding to death from 50 wounds instead of 60.

I have to say, I don't understand what it is that you are saying, Dave. Objectively speaking, this is a huge symbolic win for the Democrats, even if the margin doesn't hold up (which it almost certainly will).

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

I mean that the president threatening nuclear war over Twitter (among, shall we say, other things) only cost his party about 20% of its supporters. That's a travesty.

You can decry the fact that anyone ever voted for an ignorant blowhard like Trump in the first place, but that is the reality that we have (and I doubt that he lost 20%, or even 2%, of his voters, because he tweeted about nuclear war). The best we can hope for is to take back the country, one vote at a time. And the first step towards doing that is taking back the House of Representative (and perhaps the Senate, though objectively that is unlikely) this year.

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

I agree, but it's still hard to feel good about it. It was one thing to support Trump in 2018; it's quite another to continue supporting him now. I'm glad the motion is in the direction I want it to be, but what's the best you can really hope for in a democracy where so many voters are willing to shrug this stuff off?

It is what it is. It certainly was eye-opening to me that as many people as did supported Trump but once that happened, I'm not surprised that people continue to support him. After all, his conduct has president has been completely consistent with his conduct as a candidate, or for that matter as public figure over the past three or four decades.

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'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'

Interestingly enough, after electing a President who swore he'd do away with the ACA, PA 18 voters cast their ballots with healthcare on their minds...and it wasn't the President's guy they backed.

I suspect that there were some Trump voters who were hoping he'd magically acquire some dignity when he swore in. Unfortunately, all that has happened is Trump has shown to all the world that not only can money not buy class, in some cases class can't even be inherited.

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When you can do nothing what can you do?

I think it's likely there's a significant number of voters who will keep voting against the current Administration and party in control of Congress regardless of who is it. Particularly in blue collar rust-best areas where, quite frankly, things are not going to go back to how they were in 1960 no matter what.

Shhhhh. Don't say that out loud. You'll make them upset.

Kidding. Not really. Many in the Rust Belt ended up breaking for Trump because of his grand promises about bringing back manufacturing and coal. The alternative message was "It's gone. If it comes back, it won't be like it was before anyway. Here are some policies to make retraining cheap and easy."

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When you can do nothing what can you do?

It's really gone. If a robot or automated system can do a job, within ten or twenty years very few humans will have those jobs. The biggest social adjustment I see in our future is what to do with billions of people for whom there are literally no jobs and never will be—no matter how honest and driven to work they are, there won't be anything for them.

If the wealth created by that kind of economy was fairly distributed, everyone would have enough to live and thrive. The Star Trek future, where everyone has what they need, to the point where money no longer exists.

But it won't be like that. In the absence of any kind of basic income/health care/social support, I think we're headed for social collapse and war, not just in our country but eventually worldwide.

Sorry—got out of bed on the wrong side this morning, I guess.

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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

On the other hand, social collapse and war would do a pretty effective job of putting a stop to robot production, which would allow (the remaining) humans to go back to slaving their lives away in meaningless mundanity.

I always find this fear very strange, and strange how often it gets brought up, considering that the process of machines replacing human labor has been going on for what, two centuries now?, and yet the West doesn't have hundreds of millions of unemployed and destitute people roaming around. In fact, US unemployment is nice and low right now despite vast swaths of jobs being made obslete by machines over the past few decades. I don't understand why so many people are worried that this will be any different in the future.

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists

yov, those unemployment numbers are ... well, not exactly a lie, but not an indication that people are gainfully employed, either.

I live in a poor part of America and I can tell you that there are vast swaths of unemployed, poor people here. California's Central Valley and other rural areas accumulate them. You don't see them as much in the cities. Many of them don't end up counted in unemployment because they are no longer actively looking for work.

They are not exactly destitute because for now we have safety nets - unemployment, food stamps, etc etc. But if you yanked welfare out of America tomorrow, you'd have about one in five people worse off than they were. And the US is said to be one of the least welfare-y parts of the West. What would happen in Europe? I don't have numbers handy, but that's a flip side to think about.

But.... is that anymore true today then it was 40 years ago? I honestly don't know but I really doubt that is the case. I don't think there has been anytime and anyplace in human history where a large portion of the population wouldn't be considered to be living in poverty by today's standards.

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists