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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7022 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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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.

plan out the insurrection

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.

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.”

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!

If you think they've meaningfully changed acceptable tactics or that there's a difference between State and Federal, sure

Wisconsin state law allowed for the capitol to remain open as long as public debate continued about a pending bill. The teaching assistants noticed that the senate had failed to set a limit on the number of speakers on a floor debate about Walker’s bill, and so signed up thousands of people to offer testimony.

Yeah, I do think that’s a little different?

As with everything, it depends on the perspective and who's telling the event, doesn't it?

The tall windows that framed the lobby were plastered with people yelling and banging on the glass,” we wrote. “They were trapped. ­The senators hid under a stairwell, out of view, while the police ordered a city bus to pull up in front of the building. Officers then formed a human wall on the sidewalk, parting the sea of protesters and creating a pathway for the senators to reach the bus.” ­Once the senators were on board, “the mob on the street began punching the windows and shaking the vehicle. … The police told the senators and staff inside to keep their heads down in case a window shattered.”

Thankfully, no one was killed. But during the course of the occupation, Walker received a steady stream of death threats against him and his wife, including one that promised to “gut her like a deer” and one threatening to kill his sons. Police found dozens of .22-caliber bullets scattered across the Capitol grounds. The occupiers drew chalk outlines of fake dead bodies etched with Walker’s name on the floor, and carried signs that read “Death to tyrants,” “The only good Republican is a dead Republican” and one with picture of him in crosshairs with the words, “Don’t retreat, Reload.”

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