Text post because the big news companies are cowards playing it safe and not calling Ossof yet, though it's basically over

Warnock makes history with Senate win as Dems near majority (AP News)

My takes below:

What does this mean?

This gives Democrats a thin majority in the senate. Does it mean they have free reign? No, the party is not that unified. In particular, as you probably have heard his name many many times now, Manchin, the "conservative Democrat" from WV is likely to be the kingmaker in votes. So it's not like just anything can get passed, and Manchin will not eliminate the filibuster easily.

So is it pointless?

ABSOLUTELY NOT

It's a huge victory nonetheless for Democrats. Remember, with control of the Senate, Chuck Schumer will be Senate Majority Leader, who controls what legislation the senate votes on. Even bipartisan bills were consistently torpedoed by McConnell who would refuse to even have a vote on it. Now, there is politics that can be done - deals, compromise, whatever. If you can't vote on something, nothing can be done. Things that are overall popular like increased stimulus are also going to pass.

Additionally, perhaps an even bigger deal, Biden can get his nominations through for cabinet and judges. There's an insane amount of unfilled heads of state departments right now, and the rest are filled with people absolutely unfit for the job. Having a real human being be the head of the EPA, or Department of Education, or the Department of Energy, and so forth is a big deal.

It also means that Justice Breyer can safely retire and have another "liberal" Justice take his place.

It's not sweeping control over the government, but it's a immensely superior political situation to McConnell stone walling anything he doesn't want, and Biden having to haggle with McConnell over how incompetent his cabinet needs to be.

Voting is determinative, especially where the constituency is precisely known, as with a legislature, executive council, panel of judges, gerrymandered electoral district, defined organisational membership. If you know, with high precision, who is voting, then you can determine or influence how they vote, or what the outcome will be. Which lends a certain amount of predictability (often considered as good), but also of a tyranny of the majority. This is especially true where long-standing majorities can be assured: legislatures, boards of directors, courts, ethnic or cultural majorities.

The result is a very high-stakes game in establishing majorities, influencing critical constituencies, packing courts, and gaming parliamentary and organisational procedures. But is this the best method --- both in terms of representational eqquity and of decision and goverrnance quality?

Hands down the most fascinating article I've read over the past decade is Michael Schulson's "How to choose? When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark", in Aeon. The essay, drawing heavily on Peter Stone, The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making (2011), which I've not read, mostly concerns decisions under uncertainty and of the risk of bad decisions. It seems to me that it also applies to periods of extreme political partisanship and division. An unlikely but possible circumstance, I'm sure....

Under many political systems, control is binary and discrete. A party with a majority in a legislature or judiciary, or control of the executive, has absolute control, barring procedural exceptions. Moreover, what results is a politics of veto power, where the bloc defining a controlling share of votes effectively controls the entire organisation. It may not be able to get its way, but it can determine which of two pluralities can reach a majority. Often in favour of its own considerations, overtly or covertly --- this is an obvious engine of corruption.

(This is why "political flexibility" often translates to more effective power than a hardline orthodoxy.)

One inspiration is a suggestion for US Supreme Court reform: greatly expand the court, hear more cases, but randomly assign a subset of judges to each case.[1] A litigant cannot know what specific magistrates will hear a case, and even a highly-packed court could produce minority-majority panels.

Where voting can be fuzzed, the majority's power is made less absolute, more uncertain, and considerations which presume that such a majority cannot be assured, one hopes, would lead to a more inclusive decisionmaking process. Some specific mechanisms;

• All members vote, but a subset of votes are considered at random. The larger the subset, the more reliably the true majority wins.
• A subset of members votes. As in the court example above.
• An executive role (presidency, leader, chairmanship) is rotated over time.
• For ranged decisions (quantitative, rather than yes/no), a value is selected randomly based on weighted support.

Concensus/majority decisionmaking tends to locked and unrepresentitive states. Fuzzing might better unlock these and increase representation.

Notes

1. A selection of articles on Supreme Court reforms and expansion, from an earlier G+ post: https://web.archive.org/web/20190117114110/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/9btDjFcNhg1 Also, notably, court restructuring or resizing has been practiced: "Republicans Oppose Court Packing (Except When They Support It)".
   • Jonathan Turley at WashPo, suggesting 19 justices:
     https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fate-of-health-care-shouldnt-come-down-to-9-justices-try-19/2012/06/22/gJQAv0gpvV_story.html
   • Robert W. Merry at The National Interest, agreeing:
     https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/court-packing-revisited-7123
   • Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times:
     http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-scotus-20180629-story.html
   • Jacob Hale Russell, at Time, suggests 27 justices:
     http://time.com/5338689/supreme-court-packing/
   • And Glen Harlan Reynolds, at USA Today ups the ante to 59 justices:
     https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/02/make-supreme-court-lots-bigger-59-justices-more-like-america-column/749326002/
   • Dylan Matthews at Vox, pointing at several other suggestions:
     https://www.vox.com/2018/7/2/17513520/court-packing-explained-fdr-roosevelt-new-deal-democrats-supreme-court
   • From the left, Todd N. Tucker at Jacobin:
     https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/supreme-court-packing-fdr-justices-appointments
   • Scott Lemieux at The New Republic:
     https://newrepublic.com/article/148358/democrats-prepare-pack-supreme-court
   • Ian Millhiser at Slate:
     http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/02/fdr_court_packing_plan_obama_and_roosevelt_s_supreme_court_standoffs.html
   • Zach Carter at Huffington Post:
     https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hey-democrats-pack-the-court_us_5b33f7a8e4b0b5e692f3f3d4
   • A pseudonymous piece by "@kept_simple" at The Outline:
     https://theoutline.com/post/5126/pack-the-court-judicial-appointment-scalia-is-in-hell
   • And a dissenting opinion from Justice Thomas Josh Blackman at National Review:
     https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/supreme-court-nominee-court-packing-not-feasible/
   • As well as some alarm klaxon sounding from The Daily Caller:
     https://dailycaller.com/2018/06/28/democrats-pack-supreme-court/

A thread you can easily ignore

A new week a new thread

As the pace and the quantity of information that is coming out of the election increases. Instead of creating a new post for everything, or not posting things because it is a smaller item, please feel free to post here.
Feel free to break out any information posted here into its own thread if the discussion warrants it.

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Final thread before the election

Race called by Decision Desk HQ at 08:50 AM EST: https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1324710866516905984

Other sources will follow as there is no path back for Donald Trump to win PA.

Update #1: Called by Business Insider
Update #2: Called by Vox (thanks @dubteedub)
Update #3: The Economist is coming as close as they can to calling it (explanation: https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1324860925745229824)
Update #4: The AP, NBC, CNN and ABC News have called the race. It's over.
Update #5: New York Times, BBC
Update #6: Meanwhile in Trump's fantasy land
Update #7: Fox News has called it as well.

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This is a continuation of the original thread from election day, which was here.

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We have a thread here in ~news that's more focused on articles and events, but I also want us to have a more conversational space to process the day. Consider this an open forum for your own thoughts and feelings.

A thread you can easily ignore

A new week a new thread

As the pace and the quantity of information that his coming out of the election increases. Instead of creating a new post for everything, or not posting things because it is a smaller item, please feel free to post here.
Feel free to break out any information posted here into its own thread if the discussion warrants it.

Major news can/should be broken out into its own topic. (use your own discretion)

Thank goodness this is almost over

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Watch on YouTube
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Debate starts ~90 minutes from the time of this posting.

Info from The Washington Post:

Location: Belmont University in Nashville

Moderator: Kristen Welker, NBC News White House correspondent and co-anchor of “Weekend Today”

Details: The debate will be 90 minutes long and have no commercial breaks. It will be divided into six 15-minute segments that the moderator has chosen. They are: fighting covid-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership.

Trump’s campaign has criticized the topics, saying they thought this was supposed to be a foreign policy debate. The head of the Commission on Presidential Debates said that’s not true.

Trump has criticized the moderator, Welker, as being biased, as he has other moderators. The commission and even a Fox News host have defended Welker’s integrity.

The commission also announced days before the debate that in light of Trump’s frequent interruptions during the first one, it will silence the microphone of the candidate who is not speaking during the two-minute opening segment for each candidate. After each candidate has two minutes, there will be an open discussion where both microphones will be on, but the commission urged civility in a statement: “It is the hope of the Commission that the candidates will be respectful of each other’s time.” The Trump campaign said it still will participate, despite the president criticizing a potential virtual debate as a forum where it would be too easy to silence his microphone.