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Goodguy  11hr ago (text post)   Edited 8hr ago   3943 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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What are the chances Trump gets impeached now and actually removed from office? Could he go to prison even? He is beyond fucked. Republicans are already turning on him on the timeline.

I think the odds that Trump is gone within a year are around 95%. (And I hope this prediction is as accurate as my election predictions from yesterday.... because the only chance for Republicans to win in 2028 is if they get rid of Trump.)

95%??? What gives you such confidence? Very few presidents have actually been removed from office.

Republicans will be in a far better position to win the next election if they remove Trump from office. If they remove him from office (or more likely, he will resign prior to being convicted), they will lose maybe 1-5% of their base in the next election from the "betrayal", but gain 5-10% which they would otherwise not be able to get if Trump remains President.

And Democrats are on track to have 55-57 Senate seats (I predicted 55 seats would be the most likely outcome, and Murkowski might switch parties), so they will only need 10-12 safe-seat Republican Senators to get on board to remove him from office.

I can guarantee you that there are at least that many Republican Senators that would be delighted to get rid of albatross Trump, especially after what an asshole he's been to so many of them, and their own personal disdain for him.

I also predict that Elon Musk, their biggest donor, along with Thiel and some other big donors, will happily support removing Trump.

So it's a no-brainer that this is going to happen. Trump can even simply resign for "health reasons" or whatever.

And there's historical precedent for Republicans to potentially bounce back. Nixon resigned as soon as enough Republicans were willing to vote to convict, and then his VP only lost the 1976 Presidential election by 1%. It's not a good chance for Republicans in 2028, but at least it's a chance.

Does it suit the Democrats to give him the boot, though?

They've got 2 years of being able to stop anything semi-productive happening and know the longer that Trump's there the more unpopular the Republicans likely become. Plus whatever risk of 'impeach Trump in 2027 and somehow he comes back in 2028 for term 3 with a mandate'

Yeah, but given the social security time bomb thé party in power in 2032 is guaranteed to lose harder than republicans did tonight.

I can guarantee you that there are at least that many Republican Senators that would be delighted to get rid of albatross Trump

How's that supposed to work? The only reason he's an "albatross" is he listened to the neocons and went all in on Iran. Would any of the non-Trumpian Republicans avoid that?

Would any of the non-Trumpian Republicans avoid that?

Even George W. Bush didn't go in on Iran. Listening to the neocons is one thing but if you only listen to them and Tel Aviv and not the rest of the military or intelligence apparatus...

Even George W. Bush didn't go in on Iran.

Not for lack of desire. He had his hands full with 2 other full scale occupations.

We're gonna have to find a way, because it looks to me like the Trump Train is about as dead as it can possibly be. There's bitter choices available on the best path forward, especially since Progressives are pushing all the various closure methods available to them and there's probably no path forward that avoids them all, but Trump at this point appears to be a fatal liability. He's never going to admit fault or error either, and will probably sabotage any attempts to route around him.

He fucked us, and he fucked is in the stupidest, most easily avoidable, least justifiable, most stereotypically awful way possible.

Sit down for a moment, think about how fucked the political situation is in America and how difficult and expensive it would be to fix, and then ponder the amount of Republican political capital we've lost to wars in the middle east. It's a fucking Greek tragedy.

It made some strategic sense to be militarily involved in the middle east, if only to secure oil. Since the shale oil revolution and wind/solar/nuclear energy advances, it makes almost no sense since we are or can be a net oil/energy producer. We should import cheap oil if we can, but if we can't then just turn on the shale faucets and let the middle east be someone else's problem.

The unfortunate thing is that I honestly get it- you have one remaining country in the Near East before you have a complete system of alliances subordinate to the US (and hence, a complete system of oil-producing nations that can be instructed not to sell to China or to the EU- something that was already done with Venezuela and [what is currently being done to] Canada, and something I don't see reversing under Blue rule either).

One notes that, in case of war with a particular strategically vital American ally in the South China Sea with an enemy that can outproduce your own forces, that it would be in one's military interest if you can Thanos-snap away all the fuel they'd use to get there. Doesn't matter how many engines you build if you can't run them (a military that depends on batteries is not practical- energy density and refueling speed are still way too slow for that).

Russia isn't ready to supply a Chinese expedition to Taiwan yet, won't be for some time, and thanks to the Ukrainian war (that the US intentionally provoked, mind you) will be in a much better position to defend against potential Chinese aggression on its eastern border if the Chinese decide they'll do it themselves (provided the Russians actually bother to invest in manufacturing the newest smart mortar systems [that is, drones] completely outside the Chinese supply chain). The PLA hasn't fought a hot war in 40 years.

But it needed to have been one thing at a time. Either sacrifice the economy of Northern states until Southern Ontario turfs the Federal government entirely in favor of Anschluss (or are rendered so economically irrelevant there's no need and you can just impose terms that way), or destroy Iran. The US is very powerful, but it is not '90s powerful, and I can absolutely believe Trump is hindered by a mindset that hasn't updated beyond the '90s.

For many people, you have your mindset locked in during middle age (or even younger) and that's what you carry with you into your old age. We beat the crap out of Iraq in 1990, and then after deposing Maduro in Venezuela it seemed like we were just as strong as we were back then, but with even better fighter jets and other military tech. With Iran, it was probably easy to believe that their regime was shaky and just needed one strong kick for it to all come crumbling down.

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Yeah, I hear you. My issue is with the "Republican senators would be delighted to get rid of him" framing, would these guys fuck you any less? My impression was that the whole point of getting Trump into power was to get rid if them.

There's a glimmer of hope in the form of panicked noises about "groyper" staffers, but by the time these guys advance through the ranks, Trump is not going to be factor anyway.

My impression was that the whole point of getting Trump into power was to get rid if them.

Which makes it extra frustrating when he burns everything we gave him to give them the one thing they could never get, in a way where the only plausible further put them more firmly between us and power than they were before.

I think this is unlikely for the simple reason that Trump will never resign voluntarily, and I just can’t see the congressional GOP having the spine to force the issue, even if it does make sense. It’s not impossible but I definitely wouldn’t bet on it.

The only reason why Republicans didn't get rid of Trump before was that they were afraid of losing elections if they did that. Now they know they are guaranteed to lose anyway as long as Trump is President and applying his recent brand of turbocharged stupidity, so Republicans literally have nothing to lose, and potentially everything to gain, by getting rid of him.

And you have to realize that the Republican base, more than anything else, hates losing. Trump is now a LOSER. This is the worst losing Trump has ever done.

In the exit polls, Trump only had 38% approval. I think the real figure of genuine approval (not pure political loyalty and trying to stick up for "your side") is 25-32%.

After tonight, his real approval in the base will be around 20-25%.

Then if Republicans aggressively attack him for being a LOSER and even for betraying some of his campaign promises, the real approval will go down to 10-20%. (This is even before getting behind whatever criminal charges get leveled against Trump.)

And most of those 10-20% voters are hardcore partisans, so Republicans can regain almost all of them in the next election simply by being "not Democrats".

So yeah, this is why the knives are going to be out. Trump will most likely be gone within a year.

And yes, Trump will absolutely resign rather than be convicted. He might wait till, like Nixon, he is told the votes are there for conviction, but at that point he will save his skin. Saving his own skin is what he is best at.

Why would Democrats allow Trump to be impeached if he weakens the Republicans so much? Better for them to make some noise about it in public but give him an easy out (as in still in office but useless) so that they get better results in 2028.

PM says it's over at 55, so you were spot on. But I don't see anywhere 2 more seats can come out of. Even if Collins switches that only makes 56

It's not Collins that will switch, it's Murkowski in Alaska. I wrote that in my comment just now, and also my comment yesterday. That would bring Democrats to 56. She just endorsed the Democrat for Governor in Alaska, she is not at all a reliable Republican.

(And I guess it doesn't matter whether or not she switches parties. I am confident she would vote to convict Trump, if it comes to that, no matter which party she is in at the time.)

I just allowed "57 Senators" for unlikely possibilities like losing in Nebraska or Mississippi, or some other Senator switching parties. 55-56 is most likely.

Aside from impeachment, I wonder if the Dems will have enough people (and spines) to invoke the War Powers Act.

We should probably replace the "national emergency" part of the War Powers Act with a new modernized set of rules, which I propose we name the "Everybody Has Fucking Cell Phones Now Act". Might the dastardly Elbonians hit us with a sneak attack? Sure! Does that mean we had best be prepared to let a President launch acts of war, for months on end, before getting Congressional approval like those dumbass Founding Fathers thought was necessary? No!

Perhaps we were all spooked during that brief window of history in which ICBMs were fast but communications were slow, but at this point incoming ICBMs are just about the only thing that we might want to make an exception for. For anything less, the Commander-in-Chief can spare 10 minutes to mass-message Congress and tally a vote before starting a war, because, as my proposed Act expressly notes: everybody has fucking cell phones now.

What? Why?

Yours, a confused foreigner.

Republicans might want to help them after tonight.

Almost 0% chance he gets removed from office and very unlikely he even gets impeached. Americans have shown they don’t want that to happen and republican senators clearly will not play ball.

As for prison, I would also say close to 0% chance. Mayyyybe in 2029, there might be cases brought against him, but democrats are so spineless, even now, that I don’t think they have stones to actually go through with it.

He'll be 82 or 83 by the time things get rolling in 2029. The optics of going after someone that old who's already been rebuked at the polls is probably not worth it. The public's mood will almost certainly be let's just move on and forget the last 4 years ever happened.

There’s probably a world where he gets removed due to some kind of dementia (seen some early signs but even if you think they aren’t there, it can always happen quick) and we get Vance as president.

I think there’s also a world where a Dem House manages to pull off an investigation into his finances and gets him dead to rights on the Emoluments Claude, but I find it extremely unlikely since the time would take (barring some extreme leak like Deep Throat or whatever) is long enough that we’d be right up to the end of his term anyways.

Otherwise? Very little chance. Even if Trump is guilty of something impeachable, it’s probably counterproductive politics to pursue it.

Emoluments Claude

I hereby diagnose you with AI substance abuse.

Haha, my phone autocorrect didn’t think Clause is something usually capitalized (…which is true)

Impeached: 100-epsilon% as epsilon -> 0

Removed? Close to 0%, much as it would be hilarious.

Impeachment probabilities require the hyperreals to express numbers that close to 1.

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