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Goodguy  18hr ago (text post)   Edited 15hr ago   5637 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.

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?

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.

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.

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