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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18858 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.

I don't see your inference that a republican victory will de-escalate things. The last time republicans won on populism, partially on the back of "basket of deplorables" , left extremism (if that's even the right word) kicked into overdrive. The lesson learned in 2016 — based on IRL conversations, not just Twitter — was that the country is shockingly still full of dangerous racists who need to be suppressed. I predict a similar reaction if Trump-backed candidates outperform expectations.

If anything, a republican drubbing might lead to de-escalation, if that's actually what you care about. McConnell's concern about "poor candidate quality" risking a slam dunk GOP victory will come true, the populists will be discredited. The RINO wing of the party will resume control. Things will go back to "normal".

If anything, a republican drubbing might lead to de-escalation, if that's actually what you care about. McConnell's concern about "poor candidate quality" risking a slam dunk GOP victory will come true, the populists will be discredited. The RINO wing of the party will resume control. Things will go back to "normal".

Yes, the "normal" where [Mitt Romney was a dangerous theocrat who was going to implement the Handmaid's Tale if elected. Even in 2018 still tarred with that brush, before he became "the only good Republican" for being anti-Trump. That "normal". For a certain section of the Democrat side (and this is based on what I see online, so that is going to be both the most exaggerated and the smallest), there is no acceptable Republican because Republicanism is evil. Get rid of the populists, and the moderates left are next for the "this guy is the worst person since Hitler" rhetoric. The only acceptable outcome is a single-party state, where the Democrats are in control forever, and then the real work of reform and restructuring can happen.

there is no acceptable Republican because Republicanism is evil. Get rid of the populists, and the moderates left are next for the "this guy is the worst person since Hitler" rhetoric. The only acceptable outcome is a single-party state, where the Democrats are in control forever, and then the real work of reform and restructuring can happen.

I don't think this is exactly an inaccurate view of a significant segment of the left, but I think it oversells how unified the Democrats are. There's a good amount of messaging that the Democrats are an awkward alliance of the left and center-left (erm, whatever those terms mean) that is held together by defending from the evil Republicans that want to destroy elections and ban contraception, and if the Republicans were out of the way, they could hold elections on actual policy, not whether or not to elect the evil(TM) candidate. Although I guess you may be saying that no matter how far the Overton Window moves left, the right side (even if they're currently part of the Democratic Party) will always get called an evil that must be defended from as opposed to a legitimate alternative to be discussed on merits.

Mitt Romney was a dangerous theocrat who was going to implement the Handmaid's Tale if elected.

Admittedly, I haven't read past the Wikipedia summary, but it certainly sounds like Mitt Romney's position on abortion has changed a lot in the past several years:

In a 1994 debate with Senator Ted Kennedy, Romney said: "[...] I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it, and I sustain and support that law, and the right of a woman to make that choice, and my personal beliefs, like the personal beliefs of other people, should not be brought into a political campaign." Romney had endorsed the Freedom of Choice Act which would define legal access to abortion as a federal law even if Roe is overturned.

[...]

In 2020, Mitt Romney signed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

(He made other anti-Roe comments in the intervening years according to that article; I'm just trying to stick to minimal interpretation of his comments and the published amicus brief just seemed like the most clear-cut one.)

This does make me wonder: for a few years now, or at least dating back to like 2018 or so, some people in this sphere were saying that we're about to see a political re-alignment of the parties. What would it look like? Democrats switching sides to R and trying to appeal to voters they may have once spurned, out of sheer pragmatism?

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