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Let's talk midterms. I haven't been keeping up with the races too much, but some quick research shows that Polymarket has odds for Democrats to take the House at ninety four percent and Democrats to take the Senate at seventy two percent (House market, Senate market). Apparently, the odds of a Republican sweep are down to five to seven percent (Balance of Power market).
Obviously, we can't really trust polls entirely. But I do trust the markets to be at least somewhat accurate, and so things are looking pretty horribly bad for Republicans. What are the actual implications if this happens? Because like I don't know, the second Trump term after Doge flopped, or rather, after Trump pulled back on Doge and was afraid to actually back them when it mattered. This whole term feels like kind of a mess.
What actual goals are going to be blocked by the Trump administration if the Democrats win a sweep? And I guess how much can they get done if they don't control the presidency? Or is it mainly, like, if they win the presidency in 2028 that things are gonna be bad? Walk me through the real ramifications of midterms flipping for the Democrats.
If the Democrats win the Senate, which I am hopeful they will not, then they will likely refuse to confirm all of Trump's judicial nominees, which will start a constitutional crisis whereby judges will only be confirmed when the same party controls both the Presidency and Senate.
Democratic control of the House, which is likely, will just become a circus of hearings and impeachments. Very little legislation is passed these days with executive action being much more important. Where was the law that allowed Biden to let in 15 million illegals?
What makes you hopeful, despite the terrible odds stacked against Republicans?
Do you think they'll actually pull the trigger on a constitutional crisis? That would be nuts.... and yeah deeply unfortunate.
I think the polls are fake and that states which Trump won by more than 10 like Kansas, Alaska, Texas, and Ohio are unlikely to elect Democrats. I also think El-Sayed will lose in Michigan because he sucks and his opponent is a moderate.
Clearly the prediction markets think I'm wrong. I'm not sure what information punters are going on though. Polls consistently underestimate Republicans.
Yes, if Democrats get elected, I think they will stop all judicial nominations and maybe refuse to fill other vacancies as well. This could easily lead to an 8 person Supreme Court with its obvious problem. If Dems get a trifecta in 2028, they will attempt to pack the Supreme Court as well. Even "moderate" democrats like Hilary Clinton and Pete Buttigieg seem to be onboard.
The continued (unjustified) support of Nate Silver as a polling guru by "Rationalists" (to say nothing of "Prediction Markets") proves that there now 4 things you never ask:
A man, his salary
A woman, her age
A white nationalist, if his girlfriend can pass the paperbag test
And a Rationalist, to ever, ever, just even once, actually update his priors
Nate put his thumb on the scales to give Trump even the small chance he gave him in 2016 (those odds were not supported by the actual polling data), and has been a debacle ever since. This cycle alone we've already had two completely fake polling companies exposed, and Nate taking them out of his model doesn't help given that other pollsters were already herding towards them. WaPo had to put a disclaimer on their Kansas poll data because Republicans won't respond; this is not a new problem, and it is not one that pollsters have any way to solve. But "muh Nate Silver!" will ever be the rallying cry.
Early Voting/Absentee ballots that can be traced by voting district don't look promising for Dems. Going into the midterms, I'd pegged Dems taking the House, while retaining the Senate, mostly based on "Everyone Knows" the incumbent President always loses seats, but also Iran and inflation, but at this point, it would take a miracle for the Dems to take control of the Senate, and I wouldn't be shocked if the Republicans managed to keep control of the House. The only way the polling makes sense if Dems in deep Blue states collapsed while surging in states Trump won by double digits. It's beyond preposterous.
This is more or less where I fall. Polling is just fake at this point. Dems are laying groundwork for a steal accusation and holding zoom meeting to plan out the insurrection after they lose. They don't look like people who are feeling genuinely confident.
Bet you $100 that doesn’t happen.
Seriously. The idea that Democrats would plan out organized violence over the election is insane. Even if it was a presidential election.
They literally proved they could turn it on and off in 2020.
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I think the claim of an insurrection is farfetched, but democrat aligned groups (not literally with the name democrats slapped on) have been doing organized violence over every little thing for years now.
Sure, but this is one of those noncentral things where tweaking enough little details gets us into an entirely different category.
A lone assassin is not an insurrection. Neither is a terrorist cell like those ICE ambushers. I wouldn’t count riots, even with widespread damage, unless they are specifically trying to get leverage on the state or federal government.
Say we set the definition of “insurrection” at the level of storming the Capitol. Multiple people controlling a location in the hopes of forcing a particular decision. There’s basically zero chance of Democrat voters trying anything like that!
The chance only goes down for more restrictive definitions of “insurrection.”
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Yes, Dems are laying the groundwork while sitting President and his cult are actively issuing warnings of imminent voter fraud.
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Less useful than even a standard anecdote, but I've been seeing a decent chunk of "rumours have it that the Republicans have hacked voting machines to change your vote" posts going around Tumblr.
67% of Democrats polled in 2018 believed the Russians hacked the voting machines and changed the totals to flip the result from Clinton to Trump. And yes, that's what I was referencing. Seeing and hearing a lot of "Elon Musk and AI are going to hack the machines and steal the election". When the Dems underperform compared to the polls as they have every election for a decade, this is what a supermajority of Democrats will sincerely believe. If the underperformance is bad enough to only take 0-1 parts of the legislature, I expect it to be a mainstream topic used to justify civil unrest if not insurrection crisis stuff.
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