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Goodguy  11hr ago (text post)   Edited 8hr ago   3949 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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I guess all the "voters are stupid for caring about gas prices or a wrecked economy, destroying Iran is for our eternal glory!" talk does not actually win elections for Republicans.

Hopefully Republicans overcome their Israel fetish.

The Israel fetish is built into the system, it sucks for Americans but gotta get used to it!

"We tried to change the regime in Iran and voters decided to change the regime in Congress"

  • Nancy Mace

All those people like Joel Berry (Babylon Bee), Ted Cruz, and the Republican with one eye who was a SEAL went all in on that messaging (plus $20 burritos). I wonder if they will get on board with whatever direction the new GOP takes or they will have to be purged because people like that are done on the Right now. That Republican Party is finished.

I’m just thinking back and chuckling to my post a few months ago where I said - indexing my life on my parents 30 years ago, it’s obviously way less affordable, and I was met with a chorus that I was wrong.

It’s the economy stupid. Nobody can afford a house. Burritos cost 20$. Sure sure ackshully that all you want, then lose elections

Sure but this is a macro issue across the vast majority of the developed world right now and Left-leaning parties in charge are relying on essentially the same comms. Left-side parties might be able to promise more gibs than Right-side but still gotta actually fund them.

Nearly every party in power is suffering. The right is winning in Europe maybe primarily because the left is in charge.

Eh... There's truth to the argument that the problems the west is struggling with are bigger than either party or political options, and real solutions are not feasible in a democracy... but come on, that war was retarded.

…specifically because it hurt the US economy, no?

I think almost every gripe boils down to not enough resources, and every serious gripe boils down to not enough basic resources. People want food, housing, medical care, and some luxuries, without spending the majority of their awake life on an intolerable job.

This is obviously not easy, but I’m sure we could do a better job allocating resources than now. We have LLMs automating white-collar work and robots automating blue-collar work, though not eliminating, making workers more productive, so they should be able to work less. We could maybe direct corrupt beneficiaries and aspiring entrepreneurs to robotics, logistics (reducing food waste etc. with cool new AI to make it more interesting), and encouraging people to live…not sacrificing anything they really care about (eating meat is OK)…more sustainably.

(…but no, every party in power has to focus on the more direct route of boosting their culture, which backfires as it gets associated with the stalled economy…)

No problem, the left will issue national debt to pay for gibs. Voters are pleased, in the short-term.

You mean exactly like the rightwing have been doing?

I think Israel got most of the gibs this round.

Essentially every party has to finance the Gibs juggernaut now. Atleast Right Wing parties give some slight nods and contemplation of potentially alleviating parts of it.

Homeboy, Trump literally promised $5k debt financed cash free and clear if the Republicans won. The gibs are out of control.

This, at least the Dems have a semblance of shame in how they hand out their gibs and don't make it look like naked prima facie bribery.

I'm not sure that's good. I would have thought you'd appreciate having this stuff in the open where people can get mad about it, rather than buried in the bottom of a balance sheet about providing teddy bears for orphans.

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Desperate flailing that he probably knew he had effectively zero chance of ever actually being in position to pay out.

It's a favourite pastime for people who fancy themselves "high-information" to let some artificial macroeconomic metrics override common-sense observations. Another instance of this was when people were confidently predicting the swift end (in Western favour) of the Ukraine war based on GDP comparisons back in 2022.

"Your experiences are fake; I have numbers proving that you are actually doing great, and if you're not, you're a loser." Even if that were true, it's not exactly a winning message.

Who would’ve thunk it?!?

The Republican trajectory from 2024-2026 has to be one of the biggest political self-owns in the entire history of the country. What a waste.

It's pretty insane comparing the energy post inauguration to now

I just watched a spider deliberately shoot off all 8 feet, one by one

I said this down thread: Trump's approval has been in steady decline over the past two years, with a consistent drumbeat of bad news. It's gas and Iran, but it's also ICE goons and corruption and tariffs and being a vulgarian and...

(And it's also pushing bad candidates because they kissed the ring harder)

The vulgarian part doesn't matter much if things were going well otherwise. Or if there was no Iran issue and gas was cheap that would probably be good enough.

Don’t forget Epstein. If feels unserious to put Epstein in a list of impactful political phenomena, but we have to admit that the Epstein messaging was effective.

It was right wingers themselves that were beating the drums about a "client's list" for years, and fanning blatant falsehoods. So chalk that up as another self-own.

ICE goon fallout was simply the marginal electorate doing the "No, not like that!" meme for border enforcement.

I mean, yes. I predicted that a lot of voters who said they wanted stricter immigration enforcement would balk at the reality of what a mass deportation campaign looked like.

Yeah. ICE goonery was one of the things that was necessary medicine on an issue that's otherwise completely politically intractable.

Your flair is perfect for this

it's also ICE goons and corruption and tariffs and being a vulgarian and...

Honestly, its just Gas/Iran. If you see polls about immigration, the public trust republicans more. He was a vulgarian from the get go so that probably wasnt as big of a deal. Tarrifs were certainly not helping things. I dont think many people know about the corruption.

"Gas prices are high, guess I'll vote for trans kids and DEI" turned out to be true.

dawg what is this copium

"Gas prices are high, guess I'll vote for the people not making gas prices high"

Your own example points at the cause

I was laughing at all the conservatives posting that "sarcastically". Thousandth reminder that twitter is not real life

Economy wins elections. Go figure.

Kind of. But even Trump's killer ad in 2024 was powerful not because of trans issues in isolation, but because he pretty clearly portrayed that Democrats cared about stupid shit instead of voters' actual concerns. In this election, the greater glory of Israel was the stupid shit that was getting in the way of parents' driving their kids to school (where they might be transed, but that's a step or two into the future, which is too much extrapolation for the average voter).

I agree. Being rightly or wrongly perceived as the side that is more focused on bread and butter issues is huge. Republicans ceded it back to the Democrats through wrong focus and unforced errors at the same time as the Democrats partly realized that they should talk more about the economy and less about woke stuff. Luckily for the Republicans, I'm not sure that the Democrats will be able to resist the sort of smug wokeness and belief in having an "on the right side of history" mandate that got them in trouble in the past.

Democrats will shift back to that mode shortly, if they ever left it. Lucky for them, with no power, voters were happy to ignore them and ascribe the bread and butter failings to the ruling Republicans.

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