To win a primary, they have to be crazy or at least spout the crazy talk because they've become a rump party of the deep south. After that, they can't win in any general election where people outside their carefully-crafted congressional district will vote. They used to be able to skew results just enough with voter suppression tactics and the outright rigging of voting machines, but that time has passed.

nobody out bat-shits the GOP crazy primary voters in Iowa, Wisconsin or Nevada, just to name a few. I personally worked against those in Colorado, and they are as nuts as anybody.

their heritage is steep with examples of racist behavior. But racism is everywhere. That's why our Florida suburbs are particularly susceptible to that way of life. It only takes a few Southern gentlemen in status quo style positions to bring out the worst in everyone else.

You'd be hard pressed to beat out bat-shit crazy rural Nevadans. I don't know who you worked against in Colorado, but I'll see your RW nutjob, and raise you Cliven Bundy.

all I've got is a Tom Tancredo and a Gordon Klingenschmitt. I fold. Colorado, however, is home to Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family? Looks like my Straight Flush just went a little higher.

Anybody else want to play? Remember, I'm still holding Cliven Bundy!

I've got a Piyush (Bobby) Jindal.

But I raise. Sharon Angle is my kicker.

I got Inhofe, Lankford, and Bridenstine over David Green (hobby lobby), and Gerorge Kaiser (bank of oklahoma)....does that play ?

Inhofe and Green. OK, still holding Bundy, Angle, Marvin Adelson, Cresent Hardy (my rep...tea bagger ), and hm-m-m. Can I count every freakin' crazy "militia" member who descended on us last fall? (I live in that community...got caught in the damn traffic jam they caused) A lot of them were locals. Otherwise, I'd have to go with the disgraced John Ensign, keeper of all things moral until he got caught. I'd have to call it a push!

John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Joe Barton, Rick Perry and Louie Gohmert for a hand? Looks like a flush to me.

If we get down to the state level there's enough guano crazy to fill a whole deck.

Doesn't that give you some kind of unfair advantage? I mean, they're everywhere, right? I've read Molly Ivins enough to know that when Texas level crazy enters the game, it's time to bow out. Somehow, you're holding 5 aces. With all kinds of interesting kickers. I fold.

luckily they don't have much political power at the moment so you don't here a lot about them.

I missed the memo.

You are not one of them, obvs.

racket.

Pretty sad.

But it isn't just the south. We have these people here in Colorado as Ray points out above. Just as crazy.

The truth is the US is a profoundly racist country and it exists everywhere in an entrenched institutional sense.

This is why we need to smash these guys in the general election, get Bernie in there as President so he can work with Warren, Sherrod Brown, Merkel and some others to make some real change...

BUT...

We CANNOT do the same thing we did with Obama, which is just to elect him and then step back and hope for the best. When Bernie gets in, we need to call up our Representatives and Senators regularly to pressure them into voting for OUR interests, keep petitions going - just keep up the populist pressure.

Bernie wants a 'political revolution' - I say great, but it won't happen without us STAYING engaged after the election and becoming even more active at the local and state level as well.

He said you need to pressure me to get things done. I believed he meant to get involved, the only way anything happens. Look at any major movement, women's voting, Civil Rights, slavery, union building, all fought by people getting involved

This is based on the assumption that most people are intellectually honest and base their views on reality and facts.

Which is not the case.

Not even close.

I post on a sports board that has a few political posts pop up.

There are a handful of progressives, but there is a rainbow collection of stupid that just flat ignore facts and common sense, VIRULENTLY. I mean, they are angry and absolute. There is no fact, no way to rationally try to convince them otherwise, they believe what they WANT to believe, as disconnected from reality as it may be. They just more angry and more mean when you show the disconnect.

I am in a service organization with a bunch of mostly older folks. GREAT people, truly decent, kind and giving. To my way of thinking, liberal. But, 9 out of 10 of them are devout Rs. I love them, they know my politics and love respect me, but only because I just let them believe what they want to believe for the most part. If I tried to even softly show the disconnect, it would agitate them and I would lose my relationship with them.

I know this is heady times with Bernie, and yeah, we gotta try.

But, this is not even taking into account the overall apathy out there based on our country living such a high standard of life.

So, you have mostly sane, rational people who do or might respond to a progressive view of things.
You have people who just truly don't GAF or who are too overwhelmed by it and tune out.
You have rabid right wingers who will literally die before they break from conservative programming.

You can't even lead the second two groups to the water ...

So correct.

The wholesale assclownery that ensued should get the butt-sitters moving.

it was his way of saying it differently while challenging people to actually get motivated and invoved.

or rationale to throw him under the bus to "progressives."

The man has spent 6 years getting beat up to hell by the RELENTLESS assaults from the other side while having, literally, no one from his own party stand up for him.

... no matter who gets into office unless the 4th amendment is protected to the degree the 2nd is protected

Even in a gerrymandered district, if enough people find out the truth they will vote the right way.

In addition, popular pressure from populists at the local and state level can eventually end gerrymandering. My fear is when the Dems get in power, they won't actually want to END gerrymandering just like Reid didn't want to end the filibuster in the Senate when he could have because he knew the Dems would have to use it when Repubs came into power....

We've got to get beyond that, and I agree it will be quite the challenge.

.. the left hates him now.

Don't see how getting people educated now is going to help...

What are people going to do different to get those in red states like Oklahoma and Kansas to stop voting against their own interest...


None

NOT ONE

of the candidates are proffering anything that is anything close to a fix to gerrymandering

We'd just go ahead and let these blockheads secede from the Union? They keep threatening to. We all know the deep red states take more money out of the federal coffers than they put in. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on a wall somewhere? They'd be all partying and happy. Then on the 3rd of the month when the hated government money didn't show up...

Expecially under good economic conditions. People move and they move a lot. In less than 5 years a RepubliCON gerrymandered district will turn. The gerrymandering has to be done over and over again.

There are few areas that stay the same but at the small scale that gerrymandering is done, the borders change quickly.

The 'fix' for gerrymandering is with us, in our hands - through activism and struggle at the local and state levels. As I said in my earlier post, when we have gotten wise and done as the radical right did throughout the 90s and 00s, and built strong local power bases in the cities, then we can move to end the gerrymandering. At that point, we will have to avoid the temptation to impose our own gerrymanders.

As to how to educate people, we must keep at it. Each person to whom you speak is a person you can educate, and our social media trumpeting out the truth will eat at the edges of the 'crazy right wing' cancer that has metasticised across this nation. The truth is powerful, and we must have the courage to speak it.

I didn't say it would be easy, did I?

Nobody from this side of the aisle was asking Reid to end the filibuster. That's the excuse he used to justify his (again) caving to Mitch McConnell empty promises on the use of the filibuster. What he was being asked to do was end the bullshit statement, "This bill needs 60 votes", to be accepted AS A FILIBUSTER. It's no longer "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". As crazy as they are, at least Rand Paul and Ted Cruz got into the well on the Senate floor and did a real filibuster. Want to hold up this bill? Then get your ass on the floor and hold the floor. After a while, enough of them will get tired of not being able to go home, they'll break the filibuster and at least let the vote be taken. These jerks don't want to be inconvenienced by doing their freaking job, so they just made it easier on themselves to make sure they can make it to cocktail hour.

Just the threat is the same as a real filibuster. You are right about the solution, too. You don't like this bill? Cool. Hold the floor then with a filibuster and let's see if you can outlast the majority that wants the bill.

They've become the party of assholes.
While the Rockefeller Republicans have been taking over ours.