CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
July 14, 2009 02:29 AM UTC
41 Comments
Schaffer follows 15,469 accounts — it’s a bit unreasonable to expect him to closely watch them all, though it is polite for him to say he does.
Also, he started following me out of the blue a few months ago, which I reciprocated, but then he blocked me after it became apparent I was no Friend of Bob. But what do I know, I don’t have 15,000 followers.
I didn’t expect it.
It’s the little details like this that make it all worthwhile. 🙂
Bob Schaffer needs something to do besides Twitter. Here’s to those vigilant computer crime investigators!
Schaffer robo-tweets, but because he uses an “automated” message (whether literally or merely in effect) so assertively deceptive, combining colloquialisms, a condescending complement to the “persuasiveness” of messages neither he nor anyone else has ever read, and a promise to continue offering such personalized attention in the future, all to deceive his would-be supporters.
Once again, it is the “triumph” of form over substance, something many here adore, but something which is more worthy of the deepest disgust. This kind of thing, above almost all else, should be punished with a complete political shunning of the perpetrator.
What should he do with that volume? Write a clearly automated message? If so then everyone would ping him for that.
There’s lots of things to complain about when it comes to Bob Schaffer. But I don’t think this is one of them.
The fact a public figure sends polite form letters — this is what’s “worthy of the deepest disgust”?
that those emails I get from the President once a week aren’t ACTUALLY from him, written personally to me?!?!
Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
and being dismayed. The practices worthy of the most concern are not those that the occasional outlier commits and is promptly dumped from public life as a result, but rather those that are so widespread and accepted that, as they gradually creep deeper into deceptiveness, people are quicker to defend them as “the norm” than to step back and notice that they don’t comprise a norm any of us should be endorsing, even if only by omission.
I can’t believe I found it in the first guess.
But informal automated notes that say “Wow, those are some really convincing arguments you sent me! I’ll keep an eye out for those messages in the future!” are. There’s a huge difference between the two, if only in the depth and extent of the intended deception (it’s arguable whether there is any intended deception at all in a polite form letter, and not at all arguable whether there is an intended deception in the above quoted “tweet.” Intent to deceive is relevant in some people’s book).
when you obviously haven’t seen the content.
This is an example of him acting like he is in touch with someone he isn’t in touch with. It’s a lie. You’re right, it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s just stupid that he would do that.
Not at all surprising, either. Funny, nonetheless.
from the form letters every member of Congress sends out thanking a constituent for their advice. You’re right, it’s a lie, but if you’d looked over to the right when you clicked “follow” on Schaffer’s Twitter feed, you would have seen he’s following more than 15,000 feeds and surmised some public relations hyperbole was at work. It is amusing, but it’s also no big deal.
that’s all.
don’t be so quick to accept the herd mentality here: It’s more significant than these “pundits” realize. We have increasingly created an electoral system, represented here by a class of amateur commentators on it, which praises form while ignoring substance, which shrugs off attempts to deceive and manipulate the electorate but is outraged by absolutely contentless issues which it itself conjures into existence.
Schaffer, at least as illustrated by this little stunt, is politician as commodity and campaigning as marketing taken one unfortunate step further, which is simultaneously one more unfortunate step away from a focus on substance. Few developments have a more cumulatively noxious effect on our political system, and this reflexive dismissal of it (while focusing on “scandals” of little or no significance) is more a statement of how the lens through which we view the political process has been ground than of a well-conceived prioritization of political values.
I think you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill, Steve, and that your “prioritization of political values” is out of whack in this case. If my judgment aligns with “the herd mentality” on this matter, so be it.
that the “degree” involved is not high, but the “kind” is more important than popularly recognized among those who tend to be engaged in these discussions. My point is that there is a lot of artificially-maintained misprioritization of political issues, and this is one small example of that tendency. I don’t think I’m making anything out of anything, but rather drawing attention to what we are least attentive to: Mundane political dishonesty. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of form letters that claim to be from someone who had nothing to do with them, but that is still a level of dishonesty once removed from what we have in this case, in which the choice of words was specifically designed to imply that the person in whose name the message was sent has taken a specific, emphatic, personal interest in the individual with whom they are communicating. No one has to agree with me, but I find that more troubling than other absolute non-issues that some people here have found particularly troubling. One person’s opinion. I do not begrudge anyone else their own opinion on the matter.
The herd mentality I’m referring to is the emphasis on form over substance, and on the artificial game of politics over the purpose of politics. I consider that a cumulatively significant problem, even if each given instance of it appears trivial. Again, that’s just my opinion.
in which I disagree with the widespread complacence concerning droning political dishonesty and insincerity expressed in your response:
1) You pose a false dichotomy between writing a “clearly automoted message” and writing something blatantly intended to deceive. I receive emails “from” Barack Obama all the time, and they are well-written statements in his name that don’t do contortions to pretend to have been written by him personally to me personally. He gets “pinged” neither for having written a “clearly automated message,” nor for having been assertively deceptive.
2) If that dichotomy were not false, then I would not “ping” anyone for taking the honest of the two available routes. Others might, many others might, and that is where politicians and others need to demonstrate that they have the integrity and courage to be honest even when honesty is punished.
3) Your response is symptomatic of the goal-displacement that has mind-snatched political observers in this country: “Politics” now has come to mean effective obfuscation and dissembling, pandering to the incessant demand to attend to the most inane of trivialities and to trivialize the most demanding of substantial concerns. The meaning of the word has become so utterly coopted that one must reach for some other term in order to refer to “an informed and focused concern with public policy.”
4) I get “realism,” and I get the need to mobilize realism in service to higher ideals if success in advancing those higher ideals is sincerely desired. But strategic concessions to realism, bound within the limits imposed by a fundamental commitment to honesty and integrity, does not require turning the crassest exercises of such “realism” into something between “it’s just the way it’s done, so you better get used to doing it that way” and “it’s the way it SHOULD be done, and if you don’t do it that way, you don’t DESERVE to be a politician!” After all, we collectively impose the consequences that define realism: If crass exploitation of voters’ gullability is published and punished vigorously by those who oppose recourse to such methods, then it becomes marginally less useful to do so.
5) I can tell you for myself that I would be constitutionally unable to send such a message to anyone, because I just don’t believe in lying to people, and I would be too repulsed by the act to engage in it.
That’s some prose!
because it involves brevity, a completely unknown concept to you.
We have here a bunch of people who “play” political discourse as if it were a Dungeons-and-Dragons type game, with a set of rules that everyone who plays must understand, and a fixed set of ways to score points (obtain a magic sword, advance one level by this or that arcane measure, etc.). These rules sometimes serve and sometimes obstruct, depending on context and a variety of other factors, what others with a clearer vision would recognize to be the only objective of politics and political discourse: To improve the arrangements by which we collectively coexist and individually thrive.
People who respond to each and every one of my posts with a repetition of their outrage that it doesn’t conform to the style that they insist upon as the only acceptable style are responding to a violation of an intermediate rule, one which may or may not serve the ultimate goal in any given instance.
But, alas, this isn’t Dungeons-and-Dragons, and there is no dragon-master to eject me from the game for failing to play by your rules. I’m simply interested in trying to improve the arrangements by which we live, not in obtaining fictional magical swords or advancing levels in your arcane system of make-believe measures. I use as many words as it takes me to make my point, and will continue to do so. My posts are varied, information-rich, insightful, and purposeful. Your response is monotonous, information-starved, as insightful as a pre-programmed error message, and pointless.
I’d rather continue to be the former in many words than the latter in few.
“My posts are varied, information-rich, insightful, and purposeful.”
point regarding brevity. I can’t wait until he starts campaigning–that ought to be entertaining, watching him talk down to anyone that disagrees with him. Ah, let the good times roll.
so how can I respond to either? You made an empty and repetitive snipe, not referring in any way to the content of my post, and are concerned that I didn’t respond with enough courtesy? Respond to what I say rather than, in endless repetition, to how I say it, and you’ll receive the courtesy that is due.
is not empty but it certainly is repetitive, as I have seen poster after poster that works in politics try and advise you to learn to stop talking down to folks and keep your answers succinct. Why should I bother responding to your bloviated bullshit? You have no interest in having a conversation, unless it involves people giving glowing reviews to your monologues.
A conversation is a two way street–something you seem incapable of from your ongoing “participation” here. Your unwillingness to concede that you are a guy who loves to hear yourself talk is going to prove mighty interesting come election season.
One straight and serious question for you–how old are you, Steve? I’ve often wondered since you joined the site.
“Why should I bother responding to your bloviated bullshit?”
Yes, exactly. Not only do you not respond to my “bloviated bullshit” (instead you merely complain, over and over again, that it is bloviated bullshit, and then express your anger that I, rather than pretend you are responding to what I said, point out that you are simply complaining about my “bloviated bullshit”), but, truly, why should you continue to, if you are not enjoying the conversation that you have not engaged me in? My point precisely.
I have conversations with people who have conversations with me, not with people who simply chime in to complain about my “bloviated bullshit.” (Actually, to the chagrin of many, I have conversations even with that latter group, such as this one now, rather than simply ignore them, as so many consider to be the smarter tactic).
And, when did I “fail to concede” that I’m “a guy who loves to hear himself talk?” In fact, I’ve always conceded that my posts tend to be long. I just haven’t agreed to make them the length that you insist upon.
Does this offer of advice obligate me to take it? If I advise you to jump off a bridge, am I then justified in outrage such as you are expressing toward me now if you decline to take my advice? Or, to use a more generous analogy, if I advise you to go into a profession for which there is a good market, rather than the arts that, say, you feel more inclined to pursue, am I then justified to feel outrage that you choose instead to continue to pursue a career in the arts?
Strangers (many of whom are expressing negative feelings toward me at the same time) are giving me unsolicited advice, and (the ones who are expressing the negative feelings) are outraged that I am not taking it. You don’t see anything a little bit off about that?
Your age, please?
in 49 days. Are you coming to the party?
But I think I have to clip my toenails that day.
I found a picture and that gave me a pretty good idea. Thanks anyway.
No matter how many times you repeat it as though it is a mandate I am obligated to obey, and no matter how many times I respond that I will continue to write posts that are as long as they need to be to make the point that I am making, you pretend that my doing what I’ve said I will do “proves” you right. Well, yes, many of my posts are long, if that is your point. They have been in the past and will be in the future. The need of some to repeat that fact every time I post is similar to repeating the fact that I am writing in English: Both are statements of mundane fact, and of choices that are within my discretion to make, and that I will continue to make.
I can’t help but “prove [your] original point” when your original point is the repetition of your disapproval of my exercise of free will. I can only disprove it by ceding my will to you, which I respectfully decline to do.
Get a hobby. Or even better, get your ass the blogs and go campaign. You deserve the respect you are getting, which is none. You’ve earned ounce of it.
pretentious, not at all.
I am exactly what I am, consistently, happily, unrepentently. And I remain focused on my purpose: contributing to the improvement of our collective understanding of the world we live in, and of the arrangements by which we live.
What flusters you isn’t my personal defects, whatever they may or may not be (and who really cares?), but rather the accuracy of my depiction of the nature and value of your gratuitous sniping at my choice to write long posts (oh! horrors!).
Clearly, this deep anger by some over my choice to write long posts, and then my dismissive disdain of the gratuitous complaints about my long posts, says far more about those who are so arbitrarily angered than about the nominal provocation of that anger.
The real issue isn’t how much of an ass I am, or how pretentious I am, or what I smell like, or any other such nonsense, but rather this insatiable need on the part of some to try to dictate to others on matters that in no way infringe on the rights of or are offensively directed at the would-be dictators.
You know, try a little “live and let live.” I have no issue with you, or Ralphie, or Gertie. I don’t tell you how long or short your posts should be, or how you should conduct your business, or any of these other things that are so obviously inappropriate for anyone to try to impose on anyone else. I don’t care how long or short your posts are! Why would anyone care about such things?!
There’s an anthropological dissertation to be written on this topic, I suspect, but, in the interests of compromise and fair play, I’ll refrain from writing it here and now.
May you have the most pleasant and productive of days. Really.
Ralphie’s search for a “mensa number” enhancement cream
BTW, I love the new euphemism! I would congratulate your creativity, if it weren’t completely accidental. It’s so perfect that if you strike the last three letters of “mensa” and the first two letters of “number,” you solve the mad-lib! Brilliant!
I’m going to post a clarification of this phenomenon here, and an account of my choices, for future reference.
My style offends some people for a variety of reasons: Some are offended by my “effete intellectualism” (Barron, voicing his surprise that I am a veteran); some by my violation of the arbitrary rules they seek to impose on others (e.g., long substantial and contemplative posts rather than limiting myself to some amalgam of sound-bites, quips, briefly stated opinions, and links); some, I believe, by accuracies they find insulting or personally challenging. I’m sure there are other reasons as well, involving both my own flaws, and those of the offendees.
I will focus on just a few: 1) Saying something rather than nothing, 2) emphasizing substance over form, and 3) speaking truth to the powerless.
For many who post here regularly, this is a social club which serves certain needs for its members. Those who come here to use this forum in ways which obstruct or entangle this preferred form of interaction with some variant offend those who don’t want their clubhouse polluted with stylistic “outsiders.” On top of this, once I announced my candidacy, I was not only expected to conform to those narrow, informal norms of the blog, but also to conform to the rigid, narrow, unimaginative norms of what low-level political insiders are certain constitute the requirements of being a “politician.” Since people tend to think in rigid absolutes, and to be offended when others do things which do not reinforce those absolutes, I incurred increased wrath in this way.
One of the central pillars of this aspiring-inner-circle mentality is that form is paramount, and substance is only relevant to the extent that it either serves, or hangs unobtrusively on, the correct form. Since I prioritize substance over form, and even go so far as to reject blind adherence to formal but substanceless concerns, I have violated one of the most sacred of taboos among this little tribe, and have incurred its wrath accordingly.
Finally, there is the pecular, and little noted, danger of speaking truth to the powerless. While speaking truth to power may be punished hierarchically, speaking truth to the powerless is punished from below, either diffusely or in a mob-action (here, if most frequently occurs in “tag-teams,” where two or three posters feed off of each other in the expression of their indignation, simultaneously reinforcing the legitimacy of each and signalling the illegitimacy of their isolated target). It is an attempt (mostly unconscious, I think) to protect in-group assumptions from challenges, and to create the impression of deficiency on the part of the person who sought to challenge those assumptions.
Rightly or wrongly (from a tactical point of view), I refuse to let those jabs stand as the last word, and so invite these “pissing contests,” in which my refusal to acquiesce requires redoubled efforts to prove me “deficient.” But I believe that truth, or “clarity,” if you will, is very much on my side in this dynamic, and that therefore opting to make the truth as transparent as possible is very much in my interest.
As I’ve said many times, I’m not trying to appear to be anything other than exactly what I am, a reasonably intelligent and thoughtful person deeply committed to improving our collective understanding of ourselves and the social institutional arrangements by which we coexist. I am, of course, many other things as well (both good and bad, both situational and particular to my character or personality), but those other things are of little relevance to these discussions: They serve, rather, as opportunities for others to draw attention away from what I’m saying, or away from the sincerity of my commitments.
And so it all comes full circle: I offend some others for irrelevant reasons, who then try to make the conversation about these irrelevant qualities (whether actual or fictitious) that they find offensive, none of which alters the core truth which is most salient here: This state would be very well-served by having me in its legislature. That’s the one truth that merits the focused attention of all who read these pages.
if your fine with stupid crap like that, then that’s your prerogative. Twitter is something you use to connect with people. Don’t front with some automated personal compliment. It’s like those machinated cosmetologists in Wall-e who are programmed to tell you “you’re beautiful” when in fact you are floating in space, losing all of your human faculties because your predecessors denied global warming.
Wow, the parallels are awesome.
I got blocked when I followed Schaffer earlier this year. Jason Kosena from Colorado Statesman got the same treatment. Hmmm.