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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
There is just very little ability to operate anymore as POTUS and contrarian and flakiness is high.
Trump is the only POTUS I’ve loved and it’s now apparent that America can’t be governed. He’s largely delivered on campaign promises and got crushed.
Yeah, turns out sometimes people like hearing your promises but don't like the reality you deliver. His whole immigration approach was maximum spectacle to rev up his base while not pissing off business. Turned out nobody liked the combination of lots of tear-jerker moments, maximal chaos, and minimal improvement. And the Iran War was just not a campaign promise. He very clearly did not follow through on his proposed foreign policy there. There's no possible way to spin that fiasco as america-first, the electorate isn't interested.
Americans have much too short of attention spans. The idea of re-onshoring ultimately would have paid dividends for America, but changing the business environment such that people would choose to make things in America is probably a decades long process. He couldn’t have possibly done it in 2 years.
Likewise fixing international issues. Asserting and projecting power is not an overnight thing. Again, you need at least a little time to fix the problem.
Americans didn't want international issues fixed. Anything other than a Venezuela resolution would have been a negative, and Iran was a dumb own goal.
And if you want to make big long term changes, well, you should probably either avoid starting contentious foreign wars, or achieve some sort of buy-in from most of the country. Trump had a very limited mandate, he did a lot outside that mandate, and handled that mandate in a dumb way, and this is not a shocking result.
More options
Context Copy link
But also there are visible costs in the short term that the government seems to have had no interest in, and resultant long-term problems that the government doesn't seem to have had any interest in mitigating. For example, hobbyists can no longer legally buy drones from China, or which use Chinese parts.
In theory, this is the first step in creating a big beautiful American drone industry. However, the replacement American manufacturer is shoddy, way more expensive, and focused on military use. It is also part-owned by Trump's son. And it uses American labour, so even in the best case scenario the prices are never going to be as good again. Even in the best case scenario, hobbyists (plus photographers etc.) aren't going to be able to buy DJI-quality drones for years.
Yes, it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. But for this group something they liked has got suddenly worse, it's going to be worse for a while, and there is no guarantee it's going to get better. Scale that up 100x and you have a lot of annoyed people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it comes down to how he made Republicans feel about themselves. Democrats had had been playing a wrong tape since Bush and Republican voters felt good about proving them wrong: Dems were saying "Republicans are Bush's party, they're warmongerers". Trump 1 having been notably less warmongering than Obama before him, Republicans felt good about Trump. Now Trump 2 in half his term became notably more warmongering than Biden, even just starting with Venezuela, and Republicans feel like they were taken for fools when Dems tell them "What did you expect? You voted for warmongerers!". The political realities and world events around are immaterial, they voted for the guy they thought didn't start wars and got wars and feel dumb and betrayed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link