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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.
I am not confident that the polls or the markets are capturing real signal, and so I bet against them with weak confidence. I am weakly confident that Paxton is going to win in Texas, and I am weakly confident that the Democrats will not take control of both houses.
I'm very confident that the Democrats are, at some point in the not-too-distant future, going to win an election soundly enough to regain significant control of the federal government. I'm extremely confident that when they do, they will make one or more of their available plays to punish those who opposed them and to reshape electoral politics significantly in their favor for the foreseeable future. My confidence approaches 1 that when this happens, few to none of the Blues here will object to such actions in any significant way, and the large majority will argue that they are obviously good and necessary. These are conversations we could have in advance, to the point that I feel confident I could write the resulting posts from the average Blue perspective verbatim. So it goes.
If Republicans get blown out on this election, I think it is pretty obvious that the Iran war is the culprit. It is the biggest, stupidest, most obvious political error I've ever witnessed, and certainly seems like a big enough error to destroy the Republican party long-term. I can understand why they thought it would be a good idea, I can even argue that their execution was fairly good given the givens, but one could say the same for suicide by shotgun. I do not think America has sufficient social cohesion to actually conduct a serious war at all, and I don't think most people recognize the problem even though it's staring them in the face. People used to argue that what we needed was a serious external threat to put the divisions of the culture war in perspective; after COVID and Iran, I think it's time to recognize that the scale of threat necessary for that logic to work would be on the order of an actual nuclear exchange, and even then I wouldn't bet on it working. We simply hate each other too much to cooperate in any meaningful way, no matter the consequences.
It's certainly retarded but also a massive nothingburger. The economic costs of the conflict are miniscule compared to the all the bullshit that's happened in the last 5 years. If this is really the one thing it takes to totally flip the political landscape then I don't know what to say. Beyond $1 per gallon of gas pain, most people out there couldn't care less what's going on.
I can tell you that economically to me it is indeed a nothingburger. But politically? I will be voting democrat (I voted for Trump in 24) almost entirely because of it. The "America First" President, who ran on no more foreign adventures decided that the high from bombing brown people and getting his dick sucked by Mossad honeypots was so much better than actually fixing ANY of the myriad problems in America. The American system is unfortunately designed so that the only way I can meaningfully express my displeasure is to hold my nose and vote for the opposition party. Who actually knows if I am at all representative of the independent electorate but obviously others think so too.
I still can't fathom people who bought into his no new wars schtick.
I bought into "Trump is not paid off by, and is rich enough not to need to be paid off by, the Saudi-Israeli Axis of Idiot, and will therefore pursue a saner foreign policy that may lead to less Salafi jihadism" in 2016. Hilary Clinton seemed to me to be unusually close to the Saudi influence machine, which I thought was more dangerous (in terms of corruptly influencing the US to pursue policies contrary to the national interest, and potentially in ways which would increase my personal risk of being blown up by Salafi jihadists) than the Israeli one, though the two machines were (and remained until the current Iran war started going wrong) sufficiently aligned that this may be a distinction without a difference.
Given the amount of Saudi (and Israeli? not sure) baksheesh the Trumps took in his first term, I didn't find this argument particularly credible in 2024. I also don't understand how anyone believed "Kamala is likely to do a forever war for Israel" strongly enough that "Trump won't" became a viable campaign message rather than a Captain Obvious kind of thing.
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