r/politics • u/slaysia • Dec 19 '17

Democrat wins Va. House seat in recount by single vote; creating 50-50 tie in legislature

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrat-wins-va-house-seat-in-recount-by-single-vote-creating-50-50-tie-in-legislature/2017/12/19/3ff227ae-e43e-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.82f2b85b50fa
64.6k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

3.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Who_Decided Dec 19 '17

I would absolutely hope they wouldn't, since the GOP has essentially been the party of Disney villains this entire year. Working with evil is not a quality I want in my representatives.

8

u/KallistiTMP Dec 20 '17 edited 2d ago

connect familiar dependent encourage abundant glorious violet sharp sheet vast

4

u/Who_Decided Dec 20 '17

I agree. Conservatives are 100% necessary. Fortunately neoliberals exist. Now if only we had progressives.

1

u/PraiseBeToScience Dec 20 '17

We have one. The Democrats. We need a left party.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '17

Gaston 2020!

Noooooooo ooooooooone creates jobs like Gaston, balances budgets like Gaston. He’s especially good at deeeeleeegating.

4

u/fgejoiwnfgewijkobnew Dec 19 '17

Working with evil is not a quality I want in my representatives.

I know you mean the Republicans but I want abstract this. Working with evil is a necessary evil to accomplish good in the world of politics. There are very few Bernie Sanders out there and even he will work with his enemies to advance his agenda. Game theory is going to dictate that sometimes you'll need to team up with evil to accomplish good (eg the enemy of my enemy is my friend type of situations).

1

u/Who_Decided Dec 20 '17

Working with evil is a necessary evil to accomplish good in the world of politics.

People keep saying that. I keep wondering how true it is and by what reasoning people arrive at that conclusion. In the mythology that fills my American history books, we don't work with villains. We put them down.

Game theory is going to dictate that sometimes you'll need to team up with evil to accomplish good (eg the enemy of my enemy is my friend type of situations).

Less frequently than occurs, I guarantee it. Plus, if you've played that Evolution of Trust minigame, you know what happens when the population of people who always betray grows too high.

1

u/wytrabbit Dec 20 '17

If you've ever played Risk or http://www.conquerclub.com/ you'll know that sometimes it can be highly advantageous to use your enemies to defeat other enemies. If you go all out and refuse to yield any battles, you'll find yourself in a losing war because all you've done is served to unite your enemies against you. Play it smart, win the battles that will further your agenda the most and yield the ones that set you back the least.

2

u/Who_Decided Dec 20 '17 edited Dec 20 '17

I think we're saying the same thing but using different scopes of measurement. I'm saying that working with them increases the round-over-round probability that your environment will eventually be dominated by them based on their strategy. Since that is disadvantageous to you, it follows for me that the best strategy is to prevent that.

1

u/wytrabbit Dec 20 '17

I mean yea, if you play both sides but don't bother maintaining an end game strategy defeat will be swift.