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from the It's-Fake-News-until-the-Fat-Man-Sings dept.
Democrat Doug Jones won a remarkable upset victory over controversial rival Roy Moore in the diehard Republican state of Alabama on Tuesday to win election to the US Senate.
By a margin of 49.5 to 48.9 with 91% of precincts reporting, Jones dealt a major blow to Donald Trump and his efforts to pass tax reform on Capitol Hill. Jones was able to become the first Democrat in a decade to win any statewide office in Alabama by beating Moore, who had faced multiple allegations of sexual assault during a campaign which exposed Republican party faultlines.
The Democratic victory will reduce the Republican majority in the Senate to 51-49 once Jones takes his seat on Capitol Hill. This significantly reduces the margin for error as Republicans attempt to push through a major corporate tax cut.
takyon: The final count is:
Doug Jones - 671,151 votes (49.9%)
Roy Moore - 650,436 votes (48.4%)
Write-ins (total) - 22,819 votes (1.7%)
The margin for an automatic recount in Alabama is 0.5%. Roy Moore has yet to concede.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Osamabobama on Wednesday December 13 2017, @08:23PM (8 children)
I, for one, long for the days when politicians didn't slander their opponents. Those were good times...alas, I can no longer remember them, but I assume things were once better then they are now.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 13 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
I'm there there are dozens of others between the Federalists and the anti-Federalists as well.
Mudslinging between self righteous assholes is a time honored tradition in america, as is disadvantaging the poor. Many forget that only landowners could vote in early America. It wasn't just african-americans, women, etc who couldn't vote in the old days, but even poor white men who didn't own property. Your property WAS your citizenship. And if you couldn't buy in, you weren't really a citizen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @03:26PM
You forget that there wasn't much of anything for the federal government to do in early America. There was no massive welfare state, there was no world-wide network of military bases, there was no income taxation, and there was no restrictions on the manufacture, sale, keeping, or bearing of arms.
If I had a button that I could push which would mulch the size of the US fedgov back down to pre-1791 levels, I'd push it without hesitating - and then I'd shoot the first person who mumbled a word about going out and getting hisself a slave in the face.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:00PM (2 children)
Dirty campaigns go all the way back to 1800 with Jefferson against Adams.
The website this links to is awful but an interesting read
http://mentalfloss.com/article/19668/election-1800-birth-negative-campaigning-us [mentalfloss.com]
Perhaps you should go back to Europe if you want to not deal with negative campaigns as they are part of the American experience whether you like them or not, only problem I guess is that Europe loves them too.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:03PM (1 child)
They go back way further than that, as a Roman politician [wikipedia.org] like yourself should know.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Sulla on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:07PM
Hey now those proscriptions were perfectly valid and necessary to save the Republic
*Adds Thexalon to the list
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 13 2017, @09:00PM
It's not slander if it's true.
That said, as far as I can tell the least slander-filled American presidential elections were likely 1952 and 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower was up against Adlai Stevenson. Part of the reason for that was that both those guys really respected each others' accomplishments (Ike had of course beaten the Nazis, Stevenson was a key player in forming the United Nations). And even then, Richard Nixon (then Ike's running mate) called Stevenson an "egghead", while Harry Truman said about Eisenhower “The general doesn’t know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday.”
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday December 13 2017, @11:32PM
Let me quote from a previous campaign:
"Ma, ma, where's my pa?
Gone to the whitehouse, ha, ha, ha"
"Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine,
Continental liar from the state of Maine."
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @03:57PM
I too wasn't around in 1792.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/inside-americas-first-dirty-presidential-campaign-1796-style/ [constitutioncenter.org]