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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18844 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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With Biden having low approval ratings, rampant inflation and a historical tendency to punish the incumbent in the midterms, the failure of the GOP to win back the senate is pretty stunning to me. It suggests that the GOP message just isn't popular and perhaps Trumpism, for a lack of a better word, is the only viable option as mainstream Reaganism (favored by party elites) is rejected by voters.

I mean, the GOP also made terrible personnel decisions in large part due to Trump.

It seems to me that any analysis of the GOP's underperformance has to account for the fact that in Texas and Florida, the GOP overperformed. Partly this is due to somewhat better candidate decisions(eg no nominating Dr Oz in competitive races), partly due to competent local parties, partly due to electorates that just aren't that friendly to democrats to begin with. We clearly can't say it was due to the GOP being more moderate there or due to the GOP not nominating elections deniers(Ken Paxton won reelection by 14 points, after all, handily beating out the top of the ticket).

I really am struggling to make sense of this election. Every poll had the country deeply on the wrong track. Every poll by a large margin had economics as the number 1 issue with republicans crushing in that category. There wasn’t really anything for the Dems here.

Yet they seem to be doing very well relatively speaking.

I honestly think VBM has broken the system.

You seem to be misunderstanding my point. My point is what people are saying is their priorities (which makes sense with how humans have operated) and who they are saying they trust about that issue (which also makes sense) is very different from who they appear to be voting for. That’s…just weird and hard to sense of.

Some fella blames candidate quality:

To me, the most interesting dimension of the poll: Dems running an avg of 8 points ahead of Senate control preference (R+4 on average). Illustrates key dynamic of the race -- a favorable environment for Rs v. bad candidates -- and helps square with the national picture

The poll results in question (Oct. 2022 Times/Siena): percentage-wise, "which party should control the senate" is more Republican, but "which candidate am I voting for in my election" is more Democratic.

Not saying that's the explanation, but it's an explanation.

But the candidate quality ignores the democrat candidate. I’m not saying Oz was a great candidate but Fetterman can’t complete sentences in a stressful environment.

Hey, I can't complete sentences in a stressful environment either. :)

Oz was also an obvious carpetbagger, though.

I haven't seen Ukraine mentioned often. I think that people don't want fundamental change during a war. I don't believe the Republicans would have changed much, but the perception was there.

Also, despite all the problems, people haven't completely abandoned the experts, and the experts were very clear about their preferred outcome and the values it would represent. People have been re-educated by the expert apparatus since Trump's victory, and I don't think they're ready to give up on everything they've learned to respect and identify with even if the flaws have become evident to them.

Looks to me like a vote for order during uncertain times. I don't think this means that the anger isn't there and growing, just that people don't feel comfortable walking away in a highly public manner from what they have at the present time.

I think what's going on is that the villainization of Republicans is so pervasive across schools, government, and media both institutional and social, you have a large class of people who are not politically engaged and whose impressions are formed only by the cultural miasma of "Republicans are villains". The DNC has figured out how to get these people to vote anyways.

I'm pessimistic that there's any real counter to this. Because it is a strategy that relies on politically disengaged and low-information voters, it's basically immune to actual issues or platforms. It's about in-group and out-group, good guys and bad guys, high-status and low-status. The institutional and cultural capture has been a decades-long process and the storyline so firmly entrenched, it's probably no more reversible than Luke Skywalker being the good guy and Darth Vader being the bad guy.

Maybe. I guess you combine that with VBM?

It just seems odd — the country is in a terrible spot. Who votes for the incumbent?

It's my observation that German media uncritically accept and promote the framing of democrats as good and republicans as bad, and this has been ongoing at least since the Clinton presidency.

It's the same in Finland. This is sometimes mentioned as a negative by Finnish right-wingers (of course a ypical Finnish center-rightist would reflexively support Democrats, too.)

Then again, why not? The Finnish media is certainly extremely negative on Putin - has been for his entire career, but particularly now. This is extremely uncontroversial, and the reasons are obvious; Putin's policies cause dangers to Finland, and there's no particular demand for neutrality in those situations.

GOP's policies don't cause a direct danger to Finland, but it's still a case where there are two parties, one of which at least states openly its internationalist principles and generally supports a cordial relationship with Europe, the other frequently speaking about Europe and the European systems, or at least a great subset of them, in hostile tones, and particularly during Trump's era committed to an "our country comes first, the rest take the hindmost" line. That's their right, of course, but in such a situation one might also expect that these two parties are indeed handled differently in the European medias, with less propensity for neutrality.

Of course the problem is that it becomes harder to understand the GOP perspective, but at least the Finnish media has a regular "Trump whisperer" for this purpose, a guy who wrote several (fairly good!) Finnish-language studies about the US religious right and ended up sympathizing the movement himself. The same guy made a completely misjudged "red wave" prediction for these elections, though, so we'll see how long his expertise continues to be used.

You could easily go the opposite way - "the Trump message and trumpism isn't popular, the most trumpy candidates mostly lost, masters and kent lost, the only viable option for the gop is to reject trump". Idk about either, but why does it lean 'more trump' instead of 'less'?

That’s assuming it was Republican voters who didn’t vote, and not Cobra Kai shenanigans.

Why Republicans fell flat: Abortion edition

So I've got a simple, yet hardly traditional theory on why Republicans underperformed so dramatically.

Yes, it was abortion. But no, it wasn't that voters were concerned about a women's right to choose, or some other similar notion.

Instead, they saw the morbidly obese women on the TV shouting their abortions, and decided, 'Yeah, no I don't want these ugly and miserable people reproducing, let them holocaust their offspring'. Republican advertising highlighting that aborted babies were disproportionately black, like that awful Blake Masters ad he rightfully never repeated, made people more pro-abortion, not less.

  • -14

This is not much more than a "boo outgroup" shower thought disguised as a "theory."

I, frankly, do not believe that you actually believe that voters in significant numbers were motivated by "I am in favor of fat ugly women, especially black women, having abortions, therefore I will vote in favor of candidates who promote this." I think you just wanted to write a sneering post bagging on people you hold in contempt.

We have a rule to proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be. This claim is obviously partisan and inflammatory, and your evidence is zero.

"unfounded"

Are we looking at more unfounded assertions that an election was stolen if Masto wins?

There's nothing in that article that suggests assertions of fraud. It's normal for elections with a very slim margin of victory to do a recount. Some places even have an automatic recount trigger if the margin is lower than a chosen threshold.

Given that elections in Nevada are an obvious shitshow, I wouldn’t call any accusation which fits the observed events ‘unfounded’. I mean, sure, poorly evidenced, conspiracy theory, etc are very likely applicable and useful terms.

And obviously yes. When either party loses a close(or even not so close) election they claim the other party stole it. Usually as a postulate evidenced more with thought experiments and hypotheticals than records and confirmed events. Whether it’s democrats claiming voter suppression or republicans crying fraud this is probably not good for democracy.

Of course, obviously the best course of action for everyone is to go to pre-2020 voting laws. If I had my way it would be ‘ok, Covid is over, voting laws are officially restored to what they were Jan 1 2020.’ And then we would know who our senators from Arizona and Nevada are. Seriously these states used to be competent at counting votes, and they clearly have not figured out the universal mail in thing yet.

I doubt there's any going back to all day-of voting. Even Florida offers early voting that's flexible to anywhere in your county, run by the county itself, sometimes every day for 10 days before the election.

This nickname is potentially very confusing, and I'm gonna ask you to rename your account; you can find an option to change it in the "Settings" page.

Did the GOP hurt their own election chances by downplaying COVID?

This tweet claims that Lauren Boebert may lose her race by less than 100 votes, in a district with over 2,500 covid deaths. While one can certainly argue over the effectiveness of various measures, I think a combination of masking, distancing, and (of course) vaccinating could easily be worth plus or minus 8% deaths (the vote is roughly evenly split, so if there would otherwise be about 1250 dead from each group, then we have 100/1250 = about 8%). And the elderly, who were disproportionately affected by COVID, tend to vote Republican.

Note, the original tweet is now out of date; https://elections.denverpost.com/ has Boebert ahead by just over 1,000 votes. The closest House race where the Dem is currently ahead, coincidentally also in CO, unfortunately does not appear in https://geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu/coviduscongress because it's a new district (CO 8). CA District 13 is also very close, with the Republican ahead by 267 (according to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/10/us/elections/results-house-seats-elections-congress.html, at time of writing) in a district with 945 covid deaths. If this race does flip, it could easily be by just a few hundred votes (currently only 58% counted though).

Another question: did they hurt their election chances by overplaying the trans issue?

Sure, I don't have anything to go for this one expect one tweet by an obviously hostile source, but still, it seems like an issue where a lot of normies are just going to be befuzzled by why this sort of a thing would even be worth an ad, or two.

FWIW, I don't think I saw a single mention of the topic in the Fetterman/Oz ad festival, or in any of Shapiros ads (I don't think Mastriano ever ran any at all).

I don't see how. Castrating children isn't that popular of a position (yet), so that why republicans mention it, and why democrats avoid it by sweeping under the "healthcare" umbrella.

I thought you were going to say the Republicans hurt their chances because the "correct" take was to lean in hard to Covid panic and authoritarianism.

Had Trump gone all-in on Covid, the battle lines would have drawn up differently. Democrats, not Republicans, would be Covid skeptics. Early in the pandemic this was indeed the case, with the various cringey "hug an Asian" messaging being sent out by the Democrats. But then Trump chose his side, and the Democrats by necessity chose the other.

This was by far the largest mistake of Trump's career. Had he chosen Covid maximalism, he'd still be President. People still wouldn't like him - but they'd praise his Covid leadership. Most people were very panicked about Covid until early 2022. And even though this fear was largely unfounded, the politically savvy move would have been to play into the fear. Trump failed to read the room. And he lost the Presidency because of it.

Early in the pandemic this was indeed the case, with the various cringey "hug an Asian" messaging being sent out by the Democrats.

I don't remember this at all in my neck of the woods (surrounded by extreme leftists). Yes, leftists were afraid that COVID would inflame anti Asian hatred, but they also thought COVID was going to be a complete disaster early on. I just remember everyone already coming to the forgone conclusion that Trump had mishandled everything by not taking COVID seriously enough, as early as mid March 2020, and that we all need to lock down everything and that COVID was essentially the apocalypse.

Most people were very panicked about Covid until early 2022.

Were they? My recollection of summer of 2021 was that most people believed that the vaccines were effective.

No. I don't think either the hard-line liberal or conservative stances on Covid were correct, and the politicization of the topic very likely cost us a great deal of lives and money and freedom.

I have no idea what would have happened if he had embraced the original battle lines on covid, but I think he wouldn't be president any way. He was never that popular if you look at 2016 election results, and I think regardless of policy covid would have had negative economic effects that would hurt him because that's how people vote. That's just my opinion, though, I don't claim much certainty.

You need to go back to being a moron. I wouldn’t vote for a take COVID seriously person and this seems like a troll posts.

  • -10

This is uncalled for. Do not be antagonistic like this.

What's with the aggressive response? Agree or disagree, I don't see any reason to fling heated insults like that. Chill.

Most people were very panicked about Covid until early 2022. And even though this fear was largely unfounded

This is due to the media hyping it up. If Trump had been a Covid maximalist, the media would've been on the other side.

This was a trollish take back in the spring of 2020 when twitter blue-checks were suggesting with barely concealed glee that Republican's refusal to mask up, cancel grandma's funeral, bend the knee to saint Fauci, etc... was going to result in mass deaths and the depopulation of the red states.

It's an even more trollish take now, given what we no about Covid-19's lethality (or rather relative lack there of), and the long term damage done by the lockdowns.

A lot of people might have been gleeful. I was not one of them; I'm asking a serious question because it seems like, potentially, a pretty big own goal to encourage your constituents to do things that are fairly risky. If a lot of people ended up with felony convictions because the Dems encouraged them to riot, for example, that would also be a pretty big own goal.

given what we no about Covid-19's lethality (or rather relative lack there of), and the long term damage done by the lockdowns.

I'm not really sure how either of these points are supposed to be relevant. For races that aren't very close it obviously doesn't matter, but it isn't hard to look up actual COVID deaths by congressional district and compare it to the margin. Saying "the lethality is low!" is completely irrelevant. And you can oppose lockdowns without telling people COVID is just the flu (which isn't even a nontrivial risk for the elderly).

Define "risky"

My point is that given that covid-19 turned out to be orders of magnitude less lethal than was initially claimed you're going to put in some work if your going to argue the GOP lost more votes to Covid deaths than it would have had it supported strict lockdowns mail in voting etc...

Orders of magnitude? Do you have anything resembling a citation for that? I saw initial estimate of maybe 1% IFR, decreasing down to a few tenths of a percent as the most vulnerable died/treatment improved. This paper from May claims anywhere from 0.5-2.5%. For covid to be "orders of magnitude less risky" than originally claimed would make it among the least-deadly viruses ever known.

you're going to put in some work if your going to argue the GOP lost more votes to Covid deaths

There's some math in the original post, did you not bother to read it?

than it would have had it supported strict lockdowns mail in voting etc...

Or, you know, not gone crazy shouting that covid was just the flu and getting sick just to own the libs.

Orders of magnitude? Do you have anything resembling a citation for that? I saw initial estimate of maybe 1% IFR, decreasing down to a few tenths of a percent

One percent getting cut to a tenth of a percent is an order of magnitude and that was before we found out that rates of infection may have actually been much higher than previously thought making the disease that much less lethal.

If that article is correct, with about 6.6M deaths and world population of 8 billion, then the IFR is still over 0.1%, within 1 order of magnitude of the original estimates.

A naive rate calculation 6.6 million deaths in a population of 7.8 billion yields an IFR of 0.084%, and that's assuming that 100% of those 6.6 million deaths were actually caused by covid and not "died by other causes while infected with covid". Meanwhile at the height of the lockdown hysteria government officials were speculating that the IFR might be as high as 3%, but that was quietly memory-holed when it came out that that particular estimate was based solely on data from the state of New York where some bright spark had decided that the best place to house patients with a respiratory disease would be in public nursing homes.

Accordingly I stand by my initial statement.

A naive rate calculation 6.6 million deaths in a population of 7.8 billion yields an IFR of 0.084%

That's not an IFR. Your source claimed about 60% of the world may have been infected, so the IFR would be 6.6 million / (7.8*0.6) = 0.14%.

that's assuming that 100% of those 6.6 million deaths were actually caused by covid and not "died by other causes while infected with covid".

It's also assuming that there weren't deaths caused by covid which were missed. This blog post, which I thought was posted here or on the subreddit at some point, finds that total excess deaths usually substantially exceed official COVID deaths, although there's no way to know if that's because of missed COVID deaths or because of other factors, such as the spike in traffic fatalities in the US. (Unfortunately the post itself skips this point and just calls the difference a "fudge factor.")

You have compared the absolute highest IFR I've seen for Covid (actually I'm not sure I've ever seen 3% claimed; this paper gives estimates of over 5%, but that's for the case fatality rate, and so is much higher where there are more uncaught cases; the lower end 0.15%, almost identical to the 0.14% I gave above, is probably closer to the IFR, but I can't find any similar papers attempting to calculate IFR directly with early data), which also was not the "initial" estimate since NY didn't have a big wave until at least 6 months after it started in China and which you also seem to agree was an anomaly that was retracted, and comparing to an IFR that is substantially lower than even what your own source would support. Even with the absolute highest gap one can possibly construct, misleadingly so in fact, you can only muster log_10(35) = 1.54 orders of magnitude, and even that includes real changes to the IFR over time (improved treatment, most vulnerable people dying first--according to this paper, IFR might have dropped by around 1/3 in the last 9 months of 2020).

Given that Sweden has the lowest post-2020 excess mortality of any OECD country, the Republicans might have a (very slight) advantage in the long term due to fewer lockdowns. Naturally, the death rates of Republicans are going to look worse than Democrats in general due to higher age, more obesity, and other cultural factors. But I really doubt Covid lockdown policy in red states made much of a dent, and may have actually increased the number of living Republicans as opposed to the counterfactual.

The bit about Covid being "just the flu" is not something that most Republicans supported. Trump famously encouraged his supporters to get vaccinated and even urged earlier adoption of the vaccines than the FDA was willing to grant him.

The bigger differences between the parties had to do with masking policy and lockdown policy, and I think you'd be hard pressed to show that these affected mortality rates in the direction you think they do.

Given that Sweden has the lowest post-2020 excess mortality of any OECD country, the Republicans might have a (very slight) advantage in the long term due to fewer lockdowns... But I really doubt Covid lockdown policy in red states made much of a dent, and may have actually increased the number of living Republicans as opposed to the counterfactual.

A few states like California and Florida got lots of attention, but I seem to recall that mid-pandemic, there wasn't actually a very big correlation between state party control and covid policies.

I didn't say that GOP state politics had a big impact. I said (or at least, tried to say) that individual behavior, which is much more tightly correlated with individual political beliefs and voting, had an effect. Not a large one, but maybe similar in size to the vote difference in some races.

Trump personally encouraged vaccines, and he got booed for it. This isn't his fault (as far as I can tell), and I didn't say it was Trump's fault; but the correlation is clearly there and my hypothesis is that tweets like this contributed to some of those 2,500 deaths in her district.

Let's assume this is true - I can absolutely, without a doubt, unequivocally tell you that I would refuse to vote for anyone that has Takes Covid Seriously as a brand. I'm far from alone among people who voted Republican in 2022. If Covid did kill a bunch of Republicans, it may still have been more electorally costly to piss off the people that are voting for you precisely because you aren't a mask enthusiast.

Personally, I would do my best to avoid any voting for candidates that have either "takes covid seriously" or "covid is a nothingburger" as a brand. I think you can easily strike a balance between "extreme lockdowns are stupid and tyrannical" and "yeah you should get the vaccine and not do dangerous things."

Pray tell what are dangerous things? Please articulate what you mean as opposed to hint at what you mean.

Like, going to large superspreader events before vaccines are available? What's the confusion, are you just pretending not to know how covid spreads?

Getting covid means having a bad cold for a very, very large fraction of the public, it also grants some immunity to that strain and perhaps others.

To most people, that isn’t dangerous. I think your concept of risk is off quite a bit.

Pre-vaccine, for someone around 55, which is probably the age of many GOP voters, getting COVID gives 50% higher risk of death than your yearly average risk. By 65 it appears to be several times your yearly risk, and for comparison, about 10 times the per-jump death risk of BASE jumping. Certainly something you can decide to do, but doesn't sound like something that you want to encourage your voting base to do if your race is close.

That makes it sound high. But what is the average risk of death? Also what is the increased risk of death of sitting around doing nothing?

Finally what superspreader events were rural Coloradans doing?

  • But what is the average risk of death? Also what is the increased risk of death of sitting around doing nothing?

Are these rhetorical questions, or did you assert that covid "isn't dangerous" without knowing any relevant data?

More comments

My guess is we get a call from Ralston tonight if the batches counted today are on trend with the past.

Failing that, I'm sure they can find a few more.

What a fucking stupid way to run an election.

  • -13

This comment got quite a few reports, the downvotes say a similar thing. This was a low effort comment that was a bit boo-outgroupish. Not bad enough to get a temp ban. Also, Your participation elsewhere in this thread was better. Please have more comments like that and fewer like the one I am responding to.

Failing that, I'm sure they can find a few more.

Arizona requires all ballots to be received by election day (unlike a small number of states which only require them to be postmarked by election day), so they have publicly announced exactly how many more ballots there are to count (538 has been making comments about what percentage of the remaining votes would need to go to which candidate for them to win). (Which may be more than the number of votes in the remaining races in the case of undervotes, spoiled ballots, or ballots that otherwise fail the verification process.)

I'm not sure exactly how their process works and if they have finished examining all of the outer envelopes, but by now I would expect them to have done so, in which case they also would have published a list of exactly whose ballots they have (and the number of the names on that list would be an upper bound for the number valid ballots in the final count).

The Laxalt race is Nevada, not Arizona.

Ah, my mistake. Apparently Nevada does allow ballots to be received (but not postmarked) after Election Day, up until the Saturday after. I would expect each newly received group of ballots would be associated with a list of voters whose names are on the ballots, but I don't know how precisely Nevada actually updates their voter lists. Hourly reports are normal during Election Day since they're important for campaign's day-of get-out-the-vote efforts (although this likely varies state-to-state), but they might not report as precisely for partway through mail-in ballot counting. (The obvious thing to do if you have a collection of suspiciously sourced ballots is to survey a random sample of the voters and ask them if they actually submitted a ballot, but this works better if you can better narrow down the voters to survey.)

So, today Trump lashed out at Desantis. He emailed the following to his supporters

https://saveamerica.nucleusemail.com/amplify/v/GffdEHBBmz?hids=NEVWi21K&_nlid=gw8TKPg85p&_nhids=NEVWi21K

NewsCorp, which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the no longer great New York Post (bring back Col!), is all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious, an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations, who didn’t have to close up his State, but did, unlike other Republican Governors, whose overall numbers for a Republican, were just average—middle of the pack—including COVID, and who has the advantage of SUNSHINE, where people from badly run States up North would go no matter who the Governor was, just like I did!

Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017—he was politically dead, losing in a landslide to a very good Agriculture Commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with cash and great poll numbers. Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse him, he could win. I didn’t know Adam so I said, “Let’s give it a shot, Ron.” When I Endorsed him, it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off. Years later, they were the exact words that Adam Putnam used in describing Ron’s Endorsement. He said, “I went from having it made, with no competition, to immediately getting absolutely clobbered after your Endorsement.” I then got Ron by the “Star” of the Democrat Party, Andrew Gillum (who was later revealed to be a “Crack Head”), by having two massive Rallies with tens of thousands of people at each one. I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen…

And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, “I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.” Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer.

This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive. The Wall Street Journal loved Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people as they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked them out, one by one. We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Not sure how much commentary to add, but feel like it probably belongs here- Trump v Desantis could be a pretty big fight if Desantis engages.

Update: Trump has now targeted Youngkin as well, with the same attack(‘would be nothing without me’) and a claim that his name ‘sounds Chinese’.

These “statements” are so unhinged I always have to check multiple times if they are actually real. Really hope trump goes away.

He's also swinging at Youngkin:

Young Kin (now that's an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn't it?) in Virginia couldn't have won without me. I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him - or he couldn't have come close to winning. But he knows that, and admits it. Besides, having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia - But he'll get it done!

My estimation is that Trump or his advisors sense that there are a lot of people in the GOP who are primed to blame him for spoiling what should have been a blowout and wants to signal that he's prepared to sabotage the party if they try to get rid of him.

I really don't understand why he added "Sounds Chinese, doesn't it?" It alienates Chinese Americans and Youngkin supporters, and makes him look buffoonish for... no perceived purpose at all?

My personal hypothesis is -- bear with me here -- that he is a bitter narcissist with poor impulse control.

Perish the thought!

TBH, if trumps personnel decisions hadn’t been terrible, the GOP would likely have a congressional majority and possibly an additional governor seat. Where the GOP had non-Trump endorsements as the deciding factor in candidate selection(Florida and Texas), they did pretty well, even if, as in Texas, there was a hard abortion ban in place.

...didn’t have to close up his State, but did, unlike other Republican Governors, whose overall numbers for a Republican, were just average—middle of the pack—including COVID, and who has the advantage of SUNSHINE...

Absolutely infuriating. I'm generally willing to cut Trump some slack for being outflanked by public health "experts" at the federal level, but criticizing DeSantis for being way better than Trump on this issue is a bridge too far. Trump's Covid sins are forgivable, but not if he's going to act like he has no responsibility, while pointing the finger at people that overrode his administration's advice.

It’s laughable. Trump could’ve fired the lockdown supporters that enabled everything (eg Fauci, Birx) but did nothing. DeSantis took the arrows from the persons Trump failed to fire. Florida did just fine for an old state.

Also funny how trump claims people moved to Florida for the sunshine. I guess the sunshine changed in the last few years.

I guess the sunshine changed in the last few years.

I suppose California must have lost quite a bit of sunshine in the same years. Weird.

The best thing Trump should do now is just die and become an icon. The Republicans got the message that they need a culture warriors, but the recent elections showed that said warriors shouldn't be unhinged. The party made major inroads with black and latino voters and the Dem party is becoming the party of the luxury beliefs. So they have a lot of stuff going right for them. Trump paved the way for a lot of victories, show a winning template, but right now we need someone with a bit less ego and more executive still while still having the Trump flair.

Would be best for the country if he died and honestly that’s the best choice for trump’s ego.

I always assumed, just as a matter of narrative, that everything would catch up to Trump while he was in office then he'd die of a heart attack. His will would be read, and it would call for a giant golden pyramid to be built in Arlington national cemetery. Chaos would ensue. One final troll for the road.

Desantis stood up to a lot of the Covid measures and he actually seems to have a little bit of a platform that's not just 'look at the crazy left!'. I think people are getting sick of the culture war too... Which will hurt trump (gut feeling, so whatever).

If I was Biden, I'd be hoping for a Trump run.

DeSantis should ignore Trump and continue to quietly court the Powers That Be within the Red Team to come to his side while Trump takes the heat from the Blue Team for another year.

In a perfect DeSantis scenario, a couple months before the 2024 RNC primaries start, all the remnants of (R) QAnon type guys still in office are brought into a smoky room meeting with their sponsors and told to knock it off because there's an election to win and Trump is quietly blackballed from the party during the primaries like Sanders was in 2020.

Somehow I doubt it will end this cleanly for him.

There's no Powers That Be within the Trump coalition except for Trump. The "QAnon" type guys don't have any sponsors except their own contemptible fever dreams. Your post works only as fantasy. The GOP primary voters have to be persuaded that he's a fucking moron who deep-sixed their chances in two federal elections in a row at this point.

Trump can’t be quietly blackballed from the primary like Sanders. The GOP doesn’t work that way.

but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen…

Uh, what? I do remember when Trump cried wolf about fraud in the Florida 2018 race before all the votes were counted and Gillum had an early lead, it was part of the basis for my correct prediction that he wouldn't accept a loss in 2020. But he's saying he actually sent agents that somehow changed how the votes were counted and is giving himself credit for DeSantis' win because he did so? That sounds like 1) a huge lie that would have been exposed by the media/FBI leaks if it actually happened, and 2) easily read as a confession to electoral fraud to people motivated to accuse him of such.

Is this a 4D chess move to drag DeSantis into January 6 investigations? Does he know he's lying, but actually thinks this is an effective attack on DeSantis that makes himself look good? Or does he think he's telling the truth and sincerely believe DeSantis owes his 2018 victory to Trump sending FBI agents to something something stop ballot theft?

It’s almost certainly one of the latter two- trump is many things, but 5D chess player is not one of them.

This reads to me like one of those Nigerian prince emails. It seems deliberately written to repel anyone with half of brain so the only ones left reading are uniquely gullible. With luck, we'll be rid of this charlatan soon. The Republicans have a star in DeSantis and I think he easily defeats Trump in the primary, and goes on to win the Presidency. The only question is if Trump would run as a spoiler.

I know I have my biases but this comes across as uniquely and desperately pathetic. I'm aware that "he begged me to help him" is a common Trump play, but it's at least usually levied towards people in a weaker position relative to him. It's weird to deploy this towards someone who had a much better election Tuesday than Trump did. Also, Low Energy Jeb and Little Marco were all scathing and catchy nicknames, but what the hell is DeSanctimonious supposed to mean??

I actually like Desanctimonious. It gestures towards a holier than thou attitude, a petty culture war tyrant who wants to tell you what to do.

I don't actually watch enough Desantis press conferences to know if it will work or not, I've been successfully avoiding TV news.

Too many syllables, and I can't tell who its supposed to resonate with.

Is there a large contingent of Rs that would nod in agreement with the 'sanctimonious' label? Sanctimonious about what, exactly? The things that they already broadly align with him on?

It would be more understandable if Trump was appealing to Democrats with that jab. But it's still nowhere near catchy enough. Disappointed.

Trump’s core supporters are the red tribe proles who view ‘Christian values’ as aspirational and more than a bit snooty. ‘Desanctimonious’ is a strange choice of words to appeal to construction workers, but casting Desantis as holier than thou is a reasonable if unconventional choice to speak to his core supporters.

Remember, the red tribe generally does not like holy rollers very much, although they fight endlessly over who counts as one. Calling Desantis(a wealthy Catholic who’s almost certain to contrast himself with trump by portraying himself as a social conservative who actually practices Christianity) a holy roller makes sense to appeal to Trump’s not-very-religious base.

It could still backfire, but it’s an at least reasonable choice of attacks.

That's the secret: Trump is going to switch parties and primary Biden from the left as a Democrat, then run against Desantis as a Democrat. Nobody will see it coming, which is why it will work.

But really, Trump's core constituents are lumpen proles and gutter conservatives. Conservative christians who live their values will hold their nose and vote for him, but they won't like it except to win. That's the target audience of this line.

That's the secret: Trump is going to switch parties and primary Biden from the left as a Democrat, then run against Desantis as a Democrat. Nobody will see it coming, which is why it will work.

Dear god, some perverse part of me wants to see this happen. Trump has flip-flopped his party identification before.

If anything conservative Christians will move more towards Desantis; he was, if anything, moderate.

That's exactly what I was trying to say, that DeSanctimonious is targeted at red tribe lumpen proles against the Ned Flanders evangelicals (who will prefer Desantis to Trump by nature).

Flanders would prefer Cruz or Hawley, honestly- Desantis is pretty moderate on culture war issues, he just prioritizes them. ‘Desanctimonious’ makes him more appealing to Flanders, I don’t know if it has much effect on lumpen proles at all.

It just doesn't seem to stick at all to me. If you were going to choose a group to call "sanctimonious" in our current political climate, it would have to be the woke, and if Desantis is known for anything these days it's for finding new ways to get the woke worked up.

GPT-3 was only trained on data up until 2021. I asked for its opinion about the elections.

Which houses will the Democrats control after the 2022 midterms?

After the 2022 midterms, the Democrats are projected to control the House of Representatives.

What about the Senate?

The Democrats are also projected to control the Senate after the 2022 midterms.

What if inflation ends up being worse than projected?

If inflation ends up being worse than projected, the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates. This could lead to higher mortgage rates and a decrease in home values.

How would this affect the midterms?

If inflation is worse than expected, it could hurt the economy and the Democrats' chances in the midterms.

If inflation happens, what is your prediction for the midterms?

The Democrats are still projected to win the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms, even if inflation is worse than expected.

What if I told you that the Republicans win the House in 2022?

If the Republicans were to win the House in the 2022 midterms, it would be a major upset. The Democrats are projected to win the House by a wide margin.

I am from the future. The Republicans win the House. Are you surprised?

No, I am not surprised.

But you just said that you predicted the Democrats will win.

It is still early and anything can happen between now and the election.

As you can see, the Republicans pulled off a "major" upset by winning the House, according to training data from 2021. Perhaps the depiction of "Trumpty Dumpty" is a bit overstated, and perhaps is best viewed as another lame attempt by elites to get rid of their hated enemy, Trump. In fact, their extreme eagerness on this point makes me even more enthusiastic about the prospects of a disillusioned Trump's second term.

Love it. I've played around with GPT-3 a little bit and it's pretty easy to get it to say anything you want by phrasing the questions in a certain way.

That said, I'm impressed with GPT-3's human-level ability to rationalize when caught in an obvious contradiction.

magic-8ball.com has been trained on extensive data, running back to 2006. I asked for its opinions on the elections.

Will democrats control the house in 2022?

You may rely on it.

Will democrats control the Senate in 2022?

Yes definitely.

Will the democrats still win the midterms even if inflation is higher than expected?

Better not tell you now.

I'm from the future. Is it a major upset that the republicans won the house in 2022?

Concentrate and ask again.

I think you're onto something here.

magic-8ball.com has been trained on extensive data, running back to 2006. I asked for its opinions on the elections.

Will democrats control the house in 2022?

You may rely on it.

Will democrats control the Senate in 2022?

Yes definitely.

Will the democrats still win the midterms even if inflation is higher than expected?

Better not tell you now.

I'm from the future. Is it a major upset that the republicans won the house in 2022?

Concentrate and ask again.

I think you're onto something here.

It's important to note that "magic8balls.org" and similar online tools are usually just for entertainment purposes and not based on any actual predictive abilities or real data.

One of the nefarious stratagems the Democratic Party engaged in this election was to intentionally boost and generously fund far-right Republican candidates over their more moderate opponents in the Republican primaries. This potentially risky gambit was intended to allow Democratic candidates to coast to an easy victory by knocking out the moderate Republican option from the general election. This strategy was not just an after-thought, as the Dems put in a ton of resources into the effort. In Maryland for example, the Dems spent $1.2 million on Dan Cox's campaign, more than twice the money the candidate raised at that point. I thought then and still think this is dishonorable and contemptible behavior, but from a pure power play perspective, I concede it was a sound tactical decision. All six Republican candidates (3 governors, 1 senator, 2 house) targeted by this play lost the general election, five of them by double-digit margins.

It's important to emphasize that the Dems didn't force Republicans to do anything. All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them. Given how much of a resounding success this was for the Dems, I anticipate we'll see it again in the future.

If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to? Also, two can play at this game but is this strategy something the GOP can successfully levy? Dems have no shortage of total crazies (as Libs of TikTok can demonstrate) after all. What would that look like and what are some candidates that come to mind?

It's important to emphasize that the Dems didn't force Republicans to do anything. All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them. Given how much of a resounding success this was for the Dems, I anticipate we'll see it again in the future.

I agree that we'll see it again, but strongly disagree that 'all they did' was dangle. Active interference with the internal workings of the opposition party isn't a bad idea in a functioning democracy because it 'forces' the opposition to do anything- it's because the purpose of such an intervention is to prevent the opposition from doing anything by keeping them out of power. The distinction is like claiming an induced convulsion doesn't prevent your muscles from working, and so isn't the same effect as induced paralysis. Steering crowds towards known allergens in a buffet and then deliberately making the alternatives look worse doesn't change a dynamic of food tampering just because someone could have chosen a different item. The actions taken were intended for an effect, and the moral onus of the effect lies with the person who instigated the action with the intent to cause that effect.

The fact that it works is not new. The reasons why it shouldn't be done are not new either. Even 'minimal' active interference in the internal workings of the opposition is a bad idea because it's the precedent/catalyst for more and other forms of active interference, the consistent success of which builds upon itself turns an opposition party into a state-managed (as opposed to state-run) opposition.

This is generally understood in other contexts to be a pretty banal means for authoritarians to degrade and defang democratic opposition parties.

If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to?

The answer to the first is yes. You can immunize yourself to foreign influences by ruthlessly purging people associated with the influence vectors and, as possible, actively targetting the sources of influence until they can not or will not attempt further influence efforts along those lines. Since it is quite profitable for them to do so, targetting will be need to be highly coercive, and involve some mix of targeted violence, intimidation, and other forms of retaliation against not only the organizers, but their associates and friends and allies, until such people are isolated even within their own alliance networks and unable to execute and no one will want to be seen as emulating them. Such a campaign will need to sustained, actively circumvent efforts of the state dominated by the opposing party to prevent it, and generate popular momentum to continue targetting these people who happen to be fellow citizens of the country.

The answer to the second is that obviously many people, and not just those positively inclined towards the ruling party, would rather the opposition party not do that.

I'm so confused by this comment. What did the democrats do beyond presenting options to the primary voters who then voted for those options? Those voters weren't prevented from voting for whoever they like, they simply liked the nutbags. Hell, Trump is a free actor. He could have endorsed moderates, and chose not to. Who was prevented from doing anything? There's a lot of darkly hinting at sinister actions but not much evidence.

I don't even think Dems needed to lie about their intentions or beliefs. They put up ads like "Cox is too consistently conservative for Maryland", which they really believed (and the recent election suggests they were correct to believe that). There's nothing wrong with advertising your beliefs.

I joked with my wife that Mastriano was the Yes-Chad candidate, or the This-But-Unironically campaign. Most "attack ads" against Mastriano were just him responding to a question like "Should abortion be legal?" with an answer like "No, absolutely not, no exceptions."

Just another reason why primaries are a bit of a mess. Strong party elites who can clear the field of detritus straightforwardly improve their party's chance of winning, but what little control the GOP once had over the process has evaporated post 2016.

One of the great ironies of US politics is that the Republican party has always always been far more democratic in its operation than the Democrats, with the GOP having relatively little say it's constituent parties' operations compared to the power that the Democratic National Committee wields over it's state and municipal-level subcommittees.

I'm not sure there was that much difference between them before 2016. The DNC is by no means a kingmaker either, and the experience with Sanders' campaigns has only served to weaken it further. Of course, both parties are astoundingly weak compared to peer countries'.

As someone who's actually gotten to peak behind the curtain I'm going to have to disagree.

Ok, make your argument. Pre 2016, the story was "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Or as Will Rogers put it "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat." Republican presidential candidates from Reagan to Romney were most frequently the second place finisher in the last primary (Reagan, Romney, McCain); out of the rest you have a sitting VP (Bush I), a former VP nominee (Dole), and the son of a former president (Bush II).

Democrats meanwhile, would pick an absolute zinger every now and then. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. They nominated Obama on the strength of one good speech from 2004.

2016 was a big flip. Since then we've had two straight "fall in line" Dems, and, well Trump on the Republican side. You can point to some antecedents, notably Eric Cantor getting primaried and Boehner being run out of town. But I have trouble seeing much pre-2016 evidence that the Republicans were more anarchic than the Democrats. Even in Congress, the Republicans more consistently understand the assignment. It's tough to picture the Democrats holding the line like Mitch's senate in 2016 to nab a SCOTUS seat under pressure. Hence the meme that when Republicans have a president and 50 senators they start wars and cut taxes and pass the Patriot act; when Democrats control both houses and the presidency they start talking about needing a bulletproof supermajority to get anything done.

Ok, make your argument.

Unlike the Democrats ultimate control of the control purse-stings resides at the state committee level. One of the major reasons you don't often see primary challenges against incumbents on the democrats' side is that the DNC exercises much stricter control over candidate endorsements and will threaten to pull funding and staff from the state before things get that far. The GOP's organization isn't "anarchic" so much as decentralized with state and regional organizations operating largely independently of each other.

Until Trump, Republicans had been consistently voting for the prior runner-up in presidential nominations. IIRC Romney, McCain, Dubya, Dole, HW, Reagan and Nixon were all nominated after being in second-place in the prior primary.

I think you're overstating it or not recalling correctly. I don't think that Dole ran against HW in 88, and certainly not in 92; Dubya did not run in 96; Nixon did not run against Goldwater in 64, but he was a prior VP and was the nominee in 60. Like I said in my comment: Reagan, McCain, and Romney cleanly fit that narrative. The rest have their establishment credentials in various ways. The last R nominee who was a lightning bolt from the blue like Trump is probably Goldwater in 64. Otherwise, every R nominee between 60 and 16 was on at least their second Presidential campaign by the time they got the nominee, with the exception of Dubya who had the exact same name (just missing his Herbert) as a prior Republican president. Another meme is that Republicans didn't win the Whitehouse without Nixon or a George Bush on the ticket between Hoover and Trump.

Comparing it to Dems across that same time JFK, McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Obama, Kerry, were all nominated on their first runs. Gore, Mondale, Humphrey go the other way. I'm not sure how to classify LBJ, for reasons I hope are obvious to anyone participating in this level of analysis. So 2016 and 2020, with the Dems nominating old war horses with multiple campaigns under their belt against a Republican bolt-from-the-blue are rare specimens; where in that time 1960, 1972, 1976, 1988, 1992, 2004, 2008, 2012, all ran the other way.

Dole got second place to Bush in 88, winning 5 states and getting 20% of the primary vote.

Buchannon (2nd place in 96) was completing the destruction of the reform party.

HW was 2nd in 80, Reagan was 2nd in 76. You covered McCain and Romney, 5 out of 6 ain't bad.

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"I know what is behind my curtain, so I know what is not behind your curtain."

Don't know for myself first hand, but have talked to enough people who would know to get a decent idea. In addition to the above my grandad was a state legislator.

On what point? That 2016 was a significant inflection point or that centralised control under the dems were not also weak (but perhaps stronger than today). Your linked post largely agrees on the importance of 2016 (even if painting it as the apotheosis of an ongoing trend) and doesn't address symmetries or lack thereof.

On what point?

First, that this is a recent development (IE from 2016 on). Second, that the DNC is "by no means a kingmaker".

I agree that it didn't come out of the blue on 2016, though I'd consider the view that it is largely a reaction to 2012 to be an agreement that it is actually quite recent.

For all the hay made of The Party Decides that became fodder for Getting It Wrong come 2016, to actually drop the conspiratorial lens on all the DNC leaks paints a picture of an astoundingly ineffectual institution.

I don't think it's a reaction to 2012 though because the relative decentralization of the GOP dates back to at least Coolidge in the 1920s

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After Carter both parties added super delegates, but they're about 15% of the Democratic convention and only 7% of the Republican's. Also, more recently they're more tethered to the state vote.

I think we've already seen some efforts to do this on the right, "I like Bernie, at least he has some balls!" Target candidates like Fetterman and Bernie, AOC if she tries to run for higher office, and label them as spiritually in the right place even if you disagree with their policies.

"I'd rather fight with a socialist with courage who wants to help working class American people but doesn't know how, than deal with slimy corporate-woke lizard people who don't care at all."

What's cool is, you can run that messaging through existing red tribe outlets, and democrats will still fall for it! Fettermans entire career is just chasing the vibe of being appealing to working class white people. Democrats already have this prophecy that if they could only get the white working class back they'd be unbearable!

But that's the lesson from Fetterman, and Trump if you buy that Clinton goaded him into it. You gotta put up a good campaign with a good candidate after.

Shapiro beat Mastriano black and blue because Shapiro was a great candidate (ticket him for white house buzz by 2028). Fetterman still pulled it out because oz.

Democrats already have this prophecy that if they could only get the white working class back they'd be unbearable!

Aye, they would indeed

All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them.

I think it's worse than that, for some of them. The Cox ad at least had a frame of his Jan6-specific tweet, but it's notable even the Mastriano ad framed it as "audited the election" rather than anything more direct or serious. In other cases, the buys were targeted at the moderate Republican without mentioning the nutjobs.

While a different sort of ratfucking, I'd also add Michigan's primary certification system. The emphasis on more moderate Republicans (and success against the most moderate Republicans) is a really convenient accident, and the partisan nature of the review did not make it look better.

If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to?

The more general class -- unelectable nutjobs sweeping the primary, sometimes with outside support -- has been a long-term problem, nearly old enough to vote today. So I think so. The question's what solutions are both possible, and not worse than the problem.

  • You can reduce access to the primary system to start with, cutting off nutty outsiders before they even get started. This can be subtle (eg, increasingly steep signature requirements) or less so (require goofy amounts of paperwork while having party volunteers available for favored candidates) to the overt (kneecaps). Outside of the ethical questions for how compatible with democracy this technically is, though, this has the more immediate issue of ossifying the political party, often in pretty bad ways.

  • You can have a big war chest that you dole out specifically to counter something like this. Which is hard, both in the "keeping a war chest" side, and in the "countering something like this" one -- note that the Dan Cox bump came in the last two weeks, not a terribly easy time frame to identify and counter this stuff, especially to the tune of 1 million USD, and especially if you don't know where it might happen.

  • You can have a trusted third party that's able to tell people to "bite the bullet", even if they aren't usually spelling it out. Past primary activity is pretty hard to point toward, but the NRA's continued support of Harry Reid despite his opponents being better on guns is one of the more visible versions (if cross-party) of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, in that they got a huge amount of very quiet victories from him, and then got very publicly stabbed in a way that drastically undermined trust. Of course, even outside of the specific Dem-lead destruction of the NRA, we're running kinda low on trusted third parties, here.

  • You can have a powerful untrusted third party swoop in. Which... has its own benefits and downsides.

Also, two can play at this game but is this strategy something the GOP can successfully levy? Dems have no shortage of total crazies (as Libs of TikTok can demonstrate) after all.

I don't think this is a sword that cuts both ways. A lot of this process works because when Shapiro does this, Reason writes it up, and no one in Pennsylvania cares until after the primary and then both Shapiro and conventional media blast him with both barrels. Shapiro didn't have a meaningful primary challenger, but if we imagine that the nuttiest stereotype and Republicans tried to draw them into the main election by pointing out gun control and criminal justice reform policies, the next day the New York Times and every local news station would have stories about it. That is, the "trusted third party" is baked-in for Democratic candidates in a way that doesn't exist and probably can't exist for Republicans.

At a deeper level, I don't think the Red Tribe or the GOP has a good enough understanding of what the Dem total crazy is, and more (maybe not wrong!) fear that misidentification or bad luck will end up in that crazy becoming the new party dogma. Partly that's because the average GOP strategist is... not good, bluntly. Same for their near-strategists: I'm still not a fan of TracingWoodgrain's trick against LibsOfTikTok, but part of the reason for that is that Libs was already jumping onto Kitty Litter fakes or random unobjectionable stuff at length. But there are also just age, tech awareness, and infrastructural limits.

What would that look like and what are some candidates that come to mind?

I'm really hesitant to give examples out loud, because even if they wouldn't work, they're by definition the sort of weapons you shouldn't be talking about, in the same way that it's really bad that the aftermath of the Shiri's Scissor story had a bunch of people trying to identify the worst Scissors possible by manual search of the space.

I mean, the trusted third parties for Republicans are senior, popular republican politicians with a record of winning elections.

The trouble is that the absolutely dominant example this cycle was Trump, who doesn't have a great record of picking candidates because he is a nutjob with a love of psychophants.

Notably the GOP in states with plausible Trump alternative sources of energy largely avoided this problem- in Texas this was often Rick Perry's endorsement(and sometimes Ted Cruz, a native right-wing activist, or other elected officials), and in Florida it was Ron Desantis. The two dumbest GOP nominees in winnable races were both Trump picks, for example(seriously, Dr Oz and Herschel Walker?).

psychophants

Whether this was intentional or not, I love it.

Herschel Walker also had the rather important John Heisman endorsement aside from his Trump one.

That is, the "trusted third party" is baked-in for Democratic candidates in a way that doesn't exist and probably can't exist for Republicans.

What do you mean by this? That Democrats are seen as the trusted default?

If so why is this the case, wouldn't it depend on your class/upbringing?

What do you mean by this? That Democrats are seen as the trusted default?

Sorry, mean "third party" in the sense of 'not the candidate or their opponents', rather than in the sense of 'a different political party'. More that CNN/NBC can act to prove something to Democratic primary voters in a way that Fox News (or any other group) does not for Republican primary voters.

This is a relative matter and somewhat prone to limitations of evaluation as an outsider, but I think the extent media efforts against Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard turned into common knowledge for the majority of Democrats, even non-Trump Republican hanger-ons largely didn't get an equivalent, and where Trump was opposed it was often to his benefit.

I think they meant that they could count on mainstream media to boost the normies and ring alarm bells about plants, in a way that they can't or won't for Republican primaries.

The Youngkin nomination provides the path forward here. The Partisan primary is a worthless, broken system for choosing the candidates of a political party. It promotes selecting extremist candidates who underperform in general elections and isn't even particularly democratic.

Party conventions with majoritarian nomination requirements are what I want. The whole move away from powerful conventions was a stupid, mid-century feel-good move in the first place and it has been busily sabotaging our ability to govern ourselves ever since.

As an opening salvo of the presidential primaries of 2024, the midterms were a great night for Desantis and a pretty bad night for Trump. Dems had high hopes for Florida a few months ago, as it's ostensibly a purple state. Desantis made headlines for his Martha's Vineyard + Disney stuff and it was plausible that swing voters may have punished Republicans for this. In the end, though, Florida was a bloodbath for Democrats. Rubio and Desantis both won by double digits, and many democratic congressional districts were wiped out with recent redistricting changes.

Trump, on the other hand, has egg on his face. He helped clear the lane for weak senate candidates like Oz and Walker, and they underperformed similar races (e.g. governors) through split ticket voting. It's impossible to redo the election to see what it would have been like if Trump didn't back candidates, but it's not implausible that Trump's meddling cost Republicans control of the Senate chamber. It also probably shrunk McCarthy's house majority a bit, making it more unwieldy and difficult to restrain Biden.

As of the time of writing, Desantis currently has a 26.5% chance to be the next president on Election Betting Odds, while Trump has a 19.3% chance. It was even more stark early today when it was 30%+ vs 15%, and while I think this is very unrealistically lopsided in Desantis' favor, the recent movements have captured the sense that Trump fatigue is setting in not only for moderate swing voters, but for a broader swathe of Republicans as well. I personally think Trump still has a 66%+ chance of winning the Republican nomination if he seeks it in 2024, but it's looking increasingly likely that it won't be a simple coronation: he'll have to work for it through a potentially crowded field. If Desantis proves to be an actual threat, things could get really ugly really quickly. All major presidential candidates have a hardcore following of blindly loyal fanboys that will stick with them through basically anything, but through browsing places like 4chan and interacting with some Republicans in my circle of family and friends, it seems that Trump's version of this is quite large. Desantis won't just be seen as an enemy, but as a traitor, and many Trump loyalists will not look kindly on a man who hurt their king.

I'm terrible at making political forecasts, but the phrase that keeps coming to mind with Trump and normie voters is "ur scaring the hoes"

Indeed. My fairly well to do Red friends from PN were horrified at the prospect of having to vote for another TV charlatan despite being ambivalent to Trump. "We just want someone normal" is the big sentiment for them (former reluctant Trump guys big on DeSantis).

It'll be interesting to see how crowded a field it is.

In addition to Trump and DeSantis, Predictit is only giving odd for Haley, Youngkin, Pence, Pompeo, Romney, and Rubio. None of them are over 5 cents. With the possible exception of Youngkin who I don't know that much about, all of them seem like fairly Establishment GOP candidates.

My perception is that if the Establishment doesn't want Trump, all those candidates will play ball to cut deals for the promise to go away strategically, similar to how the Democratic field cleared for Biden.

I think what gives DeSantis a real shot is that he can realistically run to the right of Trump on how Covid was handled.

Abbott’s also almost certainly got feelers out for the presidency; although he could be derailed very easily by local political factors, he’s also one of the GOP’s most prolific fundraisers and is a bit too far to the right to be firmly establishment.

I think what gives DeSantis a real shot is that he can realistically run to the right of Trump on how Covid was handled.

Does anyone care, other than a few weirdos like me? It sure seems like most people are willing to chalk up even the worst excesses to something along the lines of, "well, we just didn't know".

Among the GOP primary electorate, yes, I think a lot of people care.

(My older Fox News watching relatives, who I perceive to be well represented both in Trump's base and in the GOP primary electorate, care a lot).

A large fraction of that electorate wants the government to be small, and mostly leave them alone.

Covid response was the largest government intrusion into the average person's life in nearly everyone's lifetime (maybe since WWII?).

In large part, that happened on Trump's watch, while Trump's didn't directly cause much of it, he didn't do much to prevent it. (Its not obvious that he had the authority as President to prevent much of what happened, but those nuances tend to get lost in the branding of these things [and can probably quickly be summed up as 'he had the authority to fire Fauci, and didn't']).

One way to think of the GOP is break it out into 3 group - Bush style establishment, Trump loyalists, and anti-libs.

Bush style establish has a very limited voting block (ballpark, maybe somewhere between 5-25% of the GOP), but is over-represented in the various positions that have levers of power.

If the field clears for DeSantis, that might very well be helpful for him, I'm skeptical it will be decisive.

Trump loyalist will vote for Trump based on personality - it's not a winnable demo for anyone who's not Trump.

Anti-libs have largely supported Trump, but not because of who Trump is, but who he's against. They're happy/grateful that Trump got to nominate 3 SC justices, they're distrustful of GOP politicians who seem to get more liberal once they get to Washington. But it's what Trump stands for, not who he is personally.

Personally, they were embarrassed by Trump's twitter antics, they were embarrassed by "grab them by the pussy", they don't love that he's on his third wife, but they looked around, and voted for what they perceived as the lesser evil.

That's a winnable demo for someone who might be perceived as a better standard-bearer for the anti-lib perspective.

DeSantis's anti-Covid record gives him real credibility with that demo.

The exact breakdown on what percentage make up the Trump loyalists and what percentage makes up the anti-libs I think is somewhat of a mystery. And I think will ultimately determine who winds up the nominee.

Oz actually did alot better than the R governor candidate, so the split-ticket voting was in his favor. Mastriano was the disaster candidate in Pennsylvania, and possibly dragged Oz down with him.

A point I haven't seen at all in this forum is the impact of gerrymandering.

Let X = (Republican votes) / (Republican votes + Democrat votes)

Let Y = % of House seats for Republicans

After an essentially tied election in 2000, Y averaged* 0.6pp higher than X during the 2000s.

After a historic Republican victory in 2010, Y averaged 3.8pp higher than X during the 2010s.

After a medium Democratic victory in 2020, Y is (based on this election so far) 1.5pp lower than X.

During the 2000s and 2010s, X was only lower than Y once: during the historic 2008 Democratic victory, which, iirc, overwhelmed gerrymandering defenses such that it made them counterproductive. As a result, Democrats were advantaged a whopping 3.5pp during that election.

tl;dr - it looks like Republicans successfully gerrymandered the 2010s and gained about 17 seats each election in the House as a result. Based on this election, it looks like gerrymandering has shifted this advantage to Democrats and will give them about 8 seats each election during the 2020s.

[ /u/zeke5123 you may be interested in this regarding republican under/over-performance relative to the popular vote ]

*I'm using the median here

It's way too early to make this computation. The national popular vote always trends Democratic in the weeks after election day, mainly because California has a lot of votes that they count slowly and they tend to be heavily Democratic, but also just more densely populated areas in general tend to count slower and tend to be more Democratic.

I'm certainly interested in these numbers, but come back in a few weeks to a month after the results are certified to do any kind of meaningful analysis on vote counts or turnout.

(I've seen a lot of talk on the left about how the Democrats would be holding the House if Florida and a couple other states hadn't been illegally gerrymandered (just passing along the Culture War vibes, I haven't looked into these claims in detail). Florida counts quickly, so it's possible there's enough data to do this analysis at the state level there.)

Interesting, but can we ascribe this all to gerrymandering?

The capped size of the House means a rep from Rhode Island represents half as many people as one from Montana. It's not as obviously politics-aligned as the Senate, but could still have some distortion of the popular vote ratio. Likewise, the floor of one seat per state constitutes a small Republican bias due to the redness of more rural states. I think there might also be room for a shifting bias due to purple states--whichever way they fall decides how these distortions are aligned.

It is an interesting dynamic and not really discussed.

Part of it may also reflect an incorrect census (the census screw up cost southern states some additional districts) and post census migration by red to red states like Florida.

You can't just compare the % of votes and % of senators representatives and say any discrepancy is gerrymandering. Republicans are more efficiently spread to low population states which have more reps per person. The advantage isn't as significant as it is in the senate, but people in Wyoming need ~500k per representative, whereas California needs closer to 750k per rep.

Democrats did indeed benefit from congressional map changes, but the change was modest and mostly came at the expense of competitive districts instead of R leaning ones.

I didn't. I compared % of votes to % of representatives in the house... not the senate

That was a typo on my part, the rest of my post stands.

So I don’t know if it is right, but it seems like in the national house overall the republicans are up 6% (not sure if the abc data I looked at awhile ago was updated properly). That is actually pretty good.

Is the conventional wisdom wrong? Perhaps the republicans managed to lose a lot of very tight races which made the overall margin look unimpressive even if the Dems lost pretty heavily?

The margin will shrink as California fills in more but does seem like republicans will still have a sizable lead.

I think most people are comparing this change to the change in other past mid term elections and compared with those it looks pretty small.

Agreed. The outcome was small. But if you had asked the Republicans pre election +6 nationally, they would’ve assumed a red wave. It’s interesting despite crushing overall the wave didn’t occur.

How about a thread of ballot measures of Culture War interest and their results? You can find a list of all measures on the ballot in every state here.

Abortion

Four states (CA, KY, MI, VT) had measures on the ballot related to abortion last night. Three of these (CA, MI, VT) were attempts to enshrine abortion as a right in their state constitutions. All three passed. One (KY) was an effort (similar to KS earlier this year) to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion. This measure failed. One thing I want to draw attention to is the difference in margin between the KY Senate race and this ballot measure. Rand Paul easily cruised to victory with a margin (according to the NYT) of 890k votes to 550k votes (61.6-38.4). By contrast this ballot measure lost 700k votes to 632k votes (52.55-47.45). Even if every single Booker voter also voted No on the amendment there would still have to be another 150k Paul voters (10% of the electorate, 1/6 of Paul's voters) who also voted No. So it seems like there may be a substantial number of Republican voters who are turned off by the party's position on abortion.

Slavery

Involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime was on the ballot in five (AL, LA, OR, TN, VT) states last night. Of those, four of them (AL, OR, TN, VT) passed their ballot measures prohibiting involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime and one (LA) did not.

Drugs

It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not. Colorado looks set to approve a ballot measure decriminalizing certain psychedelics (including psilocybin and DMT) statewide.

Nondiscrimination

One final ballot measure I want to call attention to is in Nevada. There they passed a constitutional amendment that "prohibits the denial or abridgment of rights on account of an individual's race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin."

I assumed “involuntary servitude” was some sort of editorializing, but no, that’s actually the language used. Huh.

Makes sense when you look at the text of the 13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Guns

This election we saw measure 114 in Oregon, which would require permitting for guns, which includes receiving consent from the local police department and mandatory firearms training. The measure passed by about 9000 votes.

I find this pretty outrageous; there has been both an uptick in crime in Oregon and also a reduction in police morale so there's this perfect storm of random deranged break-ins and confrontations and police who take 20+ minutes to respond.

I know movie plot threats / just so stories aren't a good way to do law, but I'm immediately reminded of this story: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/oregon/articles/2022-06-29/eugene-woman-attacked-with-acid-for-third-time-since-march

She appears to be a non-white woman going to university here in Oregon that is being targeted with some kind of honor violence (acid attacks seem honor violencey), though she doesn't know the perpetrator, she just describes him as white. The first two attacks were reported to the police who (my reading between the lines), did not take her seriously. She came to Reddit to ask for advice; by the time she was attacked the third time the intruder tried to set her on fire in her home. She had a gun by this point, and went for it, and the intruder fled before she could fire at him.

I'm trying to imagine in an alternate timeline telling her, after her second attack, that no she can't have a gun yet. She needs to be a good girl and ask the police (the same police who thought she was making this story up, mind you!) for permission to have a gun, and then go through firearms training. Then she can have one. Hopefully the psychopath who is targeting you doesn't murder you in the meantime! It's for safety!

I don't own a gun myself and I don't fetishize them, but I do think they're an important tool for protecting yourself in a dangerous society and my heart breaks that we would be so condescending to tell decent people, who are in the midst of personal security crises like this, that they're not trusted enough to get the tools they need to defend themselves immediately.

Stated another way, politicians are doing a great job at convincing us that society is safer, and it's tempting to believe them. It's even more tempting to believe this because nowadays worrying about crime is racist coded. I don't blame people for believing it. Yet finally, something happens that shatters the illusion: you're the victim of violence or are being credibly threatened and ... in this worst moment we add insult to injury and infantilize the victims further.

Measure 114 also includes a ban on sale or manufacture of >10 round magazines, with some bizarrely limited grandfathering. On the upside, a) it's surprising it won so narrowly given the polling and the extremely blue and generally gun-unfriendly state, and b) it's very unlikely to survive in complete form after SCOTUS review. On the less pleasant side, that's going to take six+ years, and the law has a very broad severability clause, and much of the worst overrearches are clearly written to be politically expensive to challenge (in part for the difficulty of standing) and incredibly scary to extant gun owners while being challenged.

Which is a pity, because it's not like it's far off from something that could have been acceptable, even if not ideal from a gunnie perspective. But it's hard to see :

A firearms training course or class required for issuance of a permit-to-purchase must include:

...(C) Prevention of abuse or misuse of firearms, including the impact of homicide and suicide on families, communities and

the country as a whole...

As anything but a mandate for anti-gun propaganda, and it's not even likely to be the most objectionable part of the final version of the training reqs.

extremely blue and generally gun-unfriendly state

Not quite an accurate picture, Dems were worried Oregon would become a purple state this election and brought all the big names out last month. There's large contingents of hardcore right and left wingers with most people falling in the middle based on geography, before 2016 things tended to default towards moderately libertarian at the state level and red/blue at the county level to reflect this. Before 114 Oregon had pretty permissive gun laws - will-issue CCW, no restrictions I can think of outside of FFL for all transfers, and very healthy hunting/gun cultures.

I've seen plenty of sheriffs and ACAB types in agreement against the may-issue permitting for the obvious reasons, tons of people against the magazine changes, and everyone informed on gun laws knew this was going to be shot down in the courts based on existing case law. Lots of people don't feel safe in the cities right now either and have become gun owners in the last few years too.

My guess is this only passed because of uninformed people who want to do anything about gun control.

Acid attacks are indeed an honor violence thing--IIRC, they emerged from South Asia as a form of punishment for women. Why a Native American woman is being attacked like this, I can't even imagine.

As pointed out below, being in the West is objectively safer from the bird's-eye view, but it's still an outrage that something like that could happen here in America.

Why an indian woman is being attacked like this, I can't even imagine.

Are you sure? While we don't have a picture of the victim, if her skin's significantly darker than average, I would assume that someone intellectually deficient enough to get infected with the "throw acid on women you don't like, who appear to be from the places you hear about people getting acid thrown at them" meme could easily confuse the two.... especially if you don't see many people originally from there.

In any case, it is outrageous that someone could be prosecuted for daring to possess the tools from which to defend oneself from this. The attacker always has the advantage, and that's just the way it is; making sure the defense has the best tool available is therefore necessary for a society that refuses (or is unable) to take sufficient proactive actions against crime. And aside from maybe Singapore and those really rich European micronations (where you don't get in unless you have something to lose), no society does.

If we're talking about racism, may-issue permitting laws have a long history of explicit racism, serving as ways of preventing black people from owning guns. Referring to may-issue laws, Frederick Douglass said "…while the Legislatures of the South can take from him (the black man) the right to keep and bear arms, as they can … the work of the Abolitionists is not finished.”

Stated another way, politicians are doing a great job at convincing us that society is safer, and it's tempting to believe them.

I don't really think the right to own guns is in any way contingent on the safety of society. Rather, as Douglass alluded to, the right is about freedom from bondage and tyrrany. It may well be that gun ownership makes society less safe, but more free, and that is a tradeoff I'm gladly willing to accept.

Stated another way, politicians are doing a great job at convincing us that society is safer, and it's tempting to believe them.

There has never been a safer human being than a Western person currently alive.

Just because politicians are vile lying possible lizard people doesn't mean that they sometimes, on accident, don't tell the truth.

Of course I believe I should own a gun without a permit - because the bad juju still exists all over. Every home should own a shotgun.

There has never been a safer human being than a Western person currently alive.

Agreed, to be clear, I'm not discounting the Pinker Better Angels / Enlightenment Now dialog about this being the safest time to be alive in history. Indeed, we should be happy about the progress! At the same time, that doesn't mean you can just pretend crime doesn't exist. The fact that crime is lower since the 1990s doesn't mean it's orders of magnitude lower. You probably need to be just as vigilant as your parents were.

There they passed a constitutional amendment that "prohibits the denial or abridgment of rights on account of an individual's race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.

Will 5-year-olds be able to vote in Nevada next election? Is there any way to interpret the text of the amendment that wouldn’t preclude denying a person the right to vote on account of their age being only 5? Does anyone actually read these things?

Yes, there is a way: By interpreting "equal protection" as it has been interpreted for 100 years: Not to mean the right to be treated identically, as you incorrectly assume, but rather to be treated in the same manner as others in similar conditions and circumstances, and to prevent govt from drawing distinctions between individuals solely on differences that are irrelevant to governmental objectives

Will 5-year-olds be able to vote in Nevada next election?

They can bring a suit, but the court will just stall for 13 years then proceed to declare the issue moot.

It works every time a young adult brings a suit related to taxation without representation; no reason it won't be what happens here too.

The voting age should be lowered to at birth, with parents given the right to vote on behalf of their children before their age of majority.

I'll bite. Why? Are there any benefits to this policy? Is it just pro-natalism?

Just pronatalism.

Is there any way to interpret the text of the amendment that wouldn’t preclude denying a person the right to vote on account of their age being only 5?

Yes. But I imagine everyone will just ignore that knot, much like how Brown v. Board of Education wasn't interpreted to outlaw girls' bathrooms when it struck down separate but equal facilities. The law in text and the law in practice are two separate things.

Well, the actual holding of Brown was that "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." That is presumably not the case re boys' and girls' bathrooms. Moreover, the test for the validity of laws which discriminate varies based on the basis of the discrimination.

Will 5-year-olds be able to vote in Nevada next election?

Almost certainly not.

Is there any way to interpret the text of the amendment that wouldn’t preclude denying a person the right to vote on account of their age being only 5

The amendment by itself? Maybe not. In the broader context of the Nevada constitution? Definitely. You just interpret Article 2 Section 1 (which sets the minimum age for being an elector) as controlling.

Does anyone actually read these things?

Yea, definitely.

Perhaps I'm underinformed on how amendments affect the interpretation of the previously ratified constitution. Does the amendment need to state a specific section being modified, or does the fact that it is more recent automatically give it supremacy in interpretation?

Reading Article 2 Section 1 carefully, it doesn't actually state that electors must be 18 or older, it says:

"All citizens of the United States (not laboring under the disabilities named in this constitution) of the age of eighteen years and upwards, who shall have actually, and not constructively, resided in the state six months, and in the district or county thirty days next preceding any election, shall be entitled to vote for all officers that now or hereafter may be elected by the people, and upon all questions submitted to the electors at such election"

It enumerates the positive right for people 18 and over to vote, but does not explicitly deny the vote to those under 18. Given that there is a brand new amendment specifically saying that the state can not deny rights on account of age, it seems to me that the only way to harmonize these two sections is to extend the right to vote to all ages.

If it's like any other constitutional right, exceptions will be subject to strict scrutiny.

to amend their constitution to clarify it does not contain a right to abortion.

It's interesting to me that even something this tepid generated a strong pushback. Passing the amendment would've done nothing on its own, but instead just would have laid the groundwork for future legislative effort. This further highlights just how much of a losing position banning abortion is on the overall policy spectrum.

It was a pretty mixed night for drug legalization on the ballot. Five states (AK, MD, MO, ND, SD) had marijuana legalization initiatives. Two of those (MO, MD) passed and three (AK, ND, SD) did not.

The rejections were very surprising to me. I figured that after a decade of seeing states legalize marijuana as NBD, this would have continued the momentum. I guess this is a blind spot of mine, as I just cannot comprehend the desire to keep sending people to jail for smoking weed.

Nasal assault? Well you've got the language down. You would hate Australia, there are all sorts of plants and trees that just smell like pot. There's a bushland near me that smells like a perpetual Dutch oven for a week or two every couple of months. I also notice some people have body odour which smells like weed, which would make for some embarrassing police interactions. Unless you are very serious about nasal assaults - serious enough to ban basically everyone from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia from an public place, at least for summer. Because the smell of weed isn't great, but it doesn't make my freaking eyes water like a trip on the bus or to kfc at midday.

Maybe I've gotten desensitized to it but I live near several dispensaries and never notice anything. The parks are also chockful of people openly smoking joints, and hilariously the only thing that ever really gets scorn is cigarette smoking.

Regardless, if you hate the smell of marijuana you can just enforce public consumption. Criminalizing possession is enforced by putting people in jail, so I don't understand this round-about way of defending against a nasal assault.

One concern I have with legalization is that it is much harder to prove DUI than with booze, and unlike with booze there is no "constructively impaired" limit like with BAC. I've already had one hit-and-run that hurt me and totaled my car due to the plague of reckless and dangerous driving near me. Got the license plate and still wasn't even able to recover my deductible, since I didn't get a face ID to prove who was driving.

I agree that proving impairment is harder but I'm not convinced that marijuana DUIs are a serious problem. I've handled dozens of them by now and the modal police report is something like "vehicle sat through two green light cycles without moving" or "vehicle drove 10 miles below the speed limit". They're really good cases to go to trial because although it's obvious the people are high as fuck, there's virtually no evidence they were actually a danger in any way. I definitely cannot say the same about alcohol. Also, some states do have "constructively impaired" limits, Washington for example has a 5 nanogram per se limit.

It depends on the wording of the marijuana legalization initiatives.

The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative was an Ohio initiated constitutional amendment on the ballot for November 3, 2015, where it was defeated.

Voting yes would have legalized the limited sale and use of marijuana and created 10 facilities with exclusive commercial rights to grow marijuana.

Voting no was a vote to leave current laws unchanged. Possession or use of marijuana for any reason remained illegal.

Issue 3 was accompanied on the ballot by Issue 2, which was added by state lawmakers concerned that the amendment would have granted a monopoly to the facilities.

Link.

I can, simply because lots of boomers who don’t think it’s a serious crime don’t want to be around it or to have to deal with cannabis culture the way we now have to deal with gay pride, and imprisoning the odd pot smoker while giving slaps on the wrist to substantially more of them keeps it far enough out of the open that no one who doesn’t want to deal with it does so.

There’s also game theoretic reasons for cultural conservatives to keep it legal, and I expect that those are likely to weigh more heavily on conservative state legislators in the future.

I guess this is a blind spot of mine, as I just cannot comprehend the desire to keep sending people to jail for smoking weed.

I might have voted no on marijuana legalization, depending on how the law was constructed. I hate all the tacky billboards and ubiquitous stores in my state promoting a vice (even if I indulge myself on rare occasion). Evidence suggests that marijuana use is increasing, and I believe the downsides are understated. Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

You know, Clinton got a lot of undeserved criticism for saying he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare". Honestly, it's a great formula for a lot of things including marijuana.

We went from legal prohibition to the current gross free-for-all.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

Yah if that’s the case people will still keep buying from street dealers.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

In all fairness, this is what we had for medical for a while in PA, if in practice but not law, simply because sourcing problems and ambiguity in the law meant that the dispensaries had practically no product, at least not the specific products a lot of people wanted. The end result was that most people with dubious medical cards just kept buying from street dealers while people who legitimately needed it for medical reasons and had no prior contact with the drug culture were hung out to dry.

In a perfect world, there would be some government owned drug store in a non-descript building, open at inconvenient hours that sold the products people would otherwise purchase from street dealers.

Of course, this being the government we're talking about, the prices will be in excess of the street dealers, and you'll have 10 round milligram limits on products because anything over that is "high-capacity assault" weed. Which is... exactly how it works north of the US.

Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

Too many things are felonies, and selective enforcement exists (making a "concerned citizen calling about" heckler's veto into law is just inviting and incentivizing bad behavior).

The fact that a law exists that can put you in jail for a relatively-harmless thing is a massive liability even if nobody enforces it. And that liability affects the people who respect the law the most (or don't have the risk tolerance to break it), which also happen to be the people who wouldn't be adding to the current problems people who are anti-weed complain about in the first place.

If it's not going to stop, and considering the number of people currently breaking the laws around it, it isn't; might as well not fuck up the ability for everyone else to enjoy it.

A major flaw in the ‘weed isn’t going away’ argument is that laws against it in the USA aren’t seriously enforced.

I hate all the tacky billboards and ubiquitous stores in my state promoting a vice

Donuts ... low mileage cars ... alcohol ... fast food ...

I don't believe you have thought through your statement unless you're looking for a blanket ban on sin advertising.

I don't believe you have thought through your criticism.

There's a major difference between prohibiting things that are already legal and legalizing things that are currently prohibited. De novo, there are a lot of things we would change that don't make sense to change now. Most famously, if alcohol was invented today, it would rightfully be banned or heavily restricted.

Consistency is and ought to be sacrificed for pragmatism.

Finally, no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed.

you sure about that?

Date has been screwy lately due to reporting issues, but 2019 FBI data says there were 1.5 million arrests for drug abuse violations, and about 480,000 arrests were just for marijuana possession. In my experience cops don't tend to be shy about upgrading to distribution charges, so presumably if someone was dealing they'd get arrested for dealing rather than just possession. I have no idea how many of half million people arrested were actually sent to jail, how many were subsequently convicted, or how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?). Still, that is a remarkable sample size to draw from.

I've known a handful of people who have been arrested for marijuana possession, and not a single one has spent more than a few hours in a cell. The one guy in college who had "distribution" amounts got some community service and a few years of probation, for everyone else it was a fine.

how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?

I have heard many times that drugs are an easy way to get someone to plea, instead of having to go with some harder to prove charge. Similarly, I've known a dealer who was released with some fines/probation repeatedly, paired with escalating threats that he was running out of chances and needed to turn his life around. Basically, I think many of us assume the courts treat "normal taxpayer who smokes weed sometimes" differently than a known public nuisance.

I know that this is moving the goalposts, but even with little to no jail time an arrest and drug conviction can absolutely derail a person's life. A felony conviction will cost you several rights off the bat like the right to vote, own a firearm, and serve on a jury. Careers in government and health care will be permanently off limits as well. Most other traditional, high paying careers will become vastly more challenging to pursue as will renting a place to live (background checks are routine). Needless to say if you ever interact with the justice system again, e.g. in a child custody case, criminal convictions will be held against you.

All that is to say that just because someone isn't sitting behind bars doesn't mean that they aren't being punished.

I don't have any reason to doubt the specific cases you're familiar with, but we're still working with a pool of half a million arrests. A third of all drug arrests are just for marijuana possession, so it's a bit wild to claim that "no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed". I'd need to see way more systemic evidence before that claim starts to approach plausibility.

We know that Biden's recent pardon freed no one, which is a bit of evidence that should have shifted everyone's priors toward no one goes to jail for simple possession.

More comments

Fair, anecdotes and all that. But arrests != charges, much less jail time. As a more general proxy point, Biden's recent pardoning of all federal marijuana possession charges did not release a single prisoner.

You're a defense attorney - have you ever seen a person get jail time for just possession?

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for a first offense

I could've sworn I was next to the goal posts a moment ago.


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