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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18894 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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I'm really hoping that the Republican wave coming our way (I have some positions on Republicans winning both the House and the Senate) will cool the fire on leftwing extremism. We need a de-escalation in this country and it's never going to happen while left-aligned people continue to belabor their most noxious positions.

A sound defeat might be just the thing to correct some of the worst excesses of the morality police.

A sound defeat might be just the thing to correct some of the worst excesses of the morality police.

Undoubtedly there are extremist elements on the left (and right) who will be outraged regardless of the outcome. I think the better question is what comes after Republicans winning the house and senate.

Do we spend two years investigating Hunter Biden and impeaching Sleepy Joe as revenge for impeachment of Trump, or do we try to craft common sense compromise legislation a la Bill Clinton era? Do we unite around democracy and liberalism in the face of Russia invading Ukraine and China doing China things, or continue to sour on our ideals and flirt with authoritarianism? I don't mean taking military action against either, but for America to lead the free world it has to believe in it, and it has to believe that is more important than what are mostly low-stakes domestic squabbles. Unilateral action from either side won't lead to de-escalation; all the stakeholders need to buy into it.

I'd be thrilled with a few years of gridlock. For legislation, "better than nothing" is a high standard.

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