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With three days until Election Day, is there still enough time for the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Michigan?
Cenk Uygur's Rebellion PAC dropped a controversial new ad supporting the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed featuring a grocery store conversation about Israel. Some are calling it the most antisemitic ad of all time:
Now, I don't think this is a very good ad. It's poorly acted and a bit too on-the-nose, but accusing the political opposition of wasting money on unpopular special interests while regular citizens deal with rising prices is probably the most common political maneuver in modern American politics. Apparently, this ad is at the center of a possible last-minute fracture of the Michigan Democratic coalition.
Haley Stevens, El Sayed's defeated challenger in the dem primary, released an incredibly passive aggressive statement preemptively thanking El Sayed for his "Expected Condemnation of Antisemitic Campaign Advertisement". Amusingly, long-time TYT host Ceng Uygur has been demoted to "Hasan Piker's Uncle". In case you didn't catch the subtext, this is a threat to pull her support (as explained by Haley Stevens's fiance on TMZ for some reason?). Abdul appears to have no intention of disavowing the ad.
This doesn't seem to have affected El Sayed's chances in the prediction markets. He is now up to an 80% chance to win, but I guess we'll see what happens at the black church on Sunday.
This mostly just illustrates the enormous gap between perceptions of the elite and perceptions of the actual voting public. Abdul runs 7 points ahead of his baseline support with voters who are "focused on Israel". Support for Israel among normies is around 65-35 at this point, on the level of "trans the kids", "open the borders" or "raise my taxes". If the media remotely reflected actual public opinion they'd be asking Rogers why he supports unconditional support to a country with an approval rating comparable to syphilis.
This whole "controversy" kind of reminds me of that time Trump compared MS13 to "animals" and then the media ran with it for a week assuming that it would hurt him somehow.
I think the voters know that, if Abdul were in charge, he wouldn't merely take money away from Israel. He'd want to give money to Hamas instead. Charitably, the money wouldn't go directly to Hamas, but laundered through NGO's first. Same difference though.
Americans may feel negatively towards Israel. But they really don't like terrorists. The choice isn't Israel or nobody. It's Israel or global Islam.
I echo @Vollerei when I say that I would like to live the rest of my life without having to think about Islam even once. But, they're here I guess, and they seem determined to seize as much political power as we'll let them have.
Given demographics, Islam is almost certainly never going to be powerful enough in the US to accomplish any of the goals some of its subsets have that I find most annoying, such as imposing authoritarianism or ending social liberalism. So if I look at things from a self-centered chess-playing perspective, then in the US I am relatively comfortable with tactically using Islam against my more significant political opponents if and when there are opportunities to do so. I'd just want to make it clear to Muslims that no, this does not mean they should feel free to go beat people up for being Jews or whatever, or try to impose some sort of anti-free-speech pro-Palestinian regime on college campuses. Stick to electoral politics where you can be useful to me without doing bad shit.
Ask the UK about demographics.
Very different situations given the types of immigration the two countries get.
Get to date.
Or just like, visit a Costco. People get so into their liberal white bubbles they don't realize the vast changes that have happened.
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