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Notes -
Let's start with something juicy
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvp8glg97393o
Couple of starting points - it won't help Trump, chances of uncovering smoking guns that with tank Dems in the eventual records are slim to none. Zero chance she will be stripped of citizenship or her alleged brother deported (cue Alabama joke here). It is not escalation - the escalation was the Trump trial, but as retaliation is quite weak. If democrats obtain trifecta - I wonder what type of further escalation they will figure out.
Personally I find her the most dislikable among the squad, so I won't say I am sad.
So, did she marry her brother to bring him to the United States? It seems very plausible and I'm sure similar things happened all the time prior to 2025. At the same time, conspiracy theories about the personal lives of prominent individuals usually turn out to be fake. I'll confess to wanting to believe, which means extra caution is probably warranted.
In other news Talarico (as per my prediction) has turned up seemingly no worse for wear after a 12 day absence. But... what happened? It's a very strange absence and the official explanation (flu) should be easy to verify if he was receiving medical treatment. IIRC, a right-wing influencer on Twitter claimed to have audio from an employee at a mental health treatment facility in Ohio where Talarico supposedly was being treated after having a mental breakdown. The facility came out today with an official denial. I trust both these accounts very little.
These type of stories almost always turn out to be nothingburgers, but they are definitely fun to think about.
The most parsimonious explanation for Talarico to me seems similar to Biden's campaigns (before it all blew up): you're a Democratic campaign manager, and your candidate turns out to be kind of bad at campaigning. You know the media will essentially do your campaigning for you, and this guy is hurting your internals compared to Generic Democrat every time the public sees his face. So what do you do? Shove the guy in a basement, use the time to coach him like mad, and try to get to Election Day with voters thinking about negatives on Republicans rather than about your guy in particular. Which makes sense given how Talarico was selected ("fuck, we can't run Crockett, what white guys do we have left?"), but I suppose we'll see over the next couple weeks whether the campaign keeps him on ice or tries to get him back out there.
That makes sense.
But it feels like the Democrats missed an opportunity here.
I mean there are TONS of libtarded white guys would who love to be a Senator for Texas. We're talking boy band levels of female adulation here. How come they found this weird heretical, vegetarian, self-loathing, possibly gay guy?
Can't they just find a normal white dude who doesn't post shit about white people being a virus? It's not that hard.
Kinda of like how the Republicans are running Michelle Tafoya in Minnesota or Susan Collins in Maine. You find the best candidate you can for the race you have. There are lots of normal guys who would beat Paxton and would tow the party line once they are in office.
Talarico isn't being the Talafreako allegations. Only way he wins is a big blue wave.
The problem is finding one of those people who a. wants to be a Democrat and b. can slide through the treacherous reefs of Identity Politics Primary Season.
Yeah, I’d expect especially the latter is a rough point. There’s a million Blue Dog Democrats in Texas, usually the reverse of the Thrown In the Pit on the right on something moderate-left on abortion or trans stuff… but there’s no way they’d make it through a primary without getting quisenarted.
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