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 is there to say other than in a country which is basically stitched together through economic opportunity that if the ruling party fucks the economy blatantly and incontestably (and pointlessly, hard to see Iran as anything other than that) then they’re going to get rekt?
I’m sure the democrats will do the same in turn, and shovel another trillion dollars to boomers and various other welfare queens. On and on the wheel will turn.
The economy is not rekt. Stocks at all time highs. Oil prices especially after accounting for fuel efficient are like 40% of 2 decades ago.
Some legit K-shaped issues but no one has proposed a good way to solve that issue.
Bernie Sanders of 2016 would seem like a great candidate for today.
But still the economy can not get much better than it is right now. The biggest issue is unemployed males which are booming mostly thru leaving the labor market.
Average US gasoline price in October 2006 was $2.32/gallon, or about $3.87 in today's money. Accounting for fuel economy is harder to do, but I would caution that while economy has improved as far as specific cars are concerned, the market has shifted toward less economical vehicles. In 2006, passenger cars accounted for 11 of the top 20 best-selling vehicles in the US. In 2026, they accounted for 4, and that's giving the Tesla Model Y credit for having infinite fuel economy despite being an SUV. The modal American appears to have replaced a sedan that gets 25 mpg with an SUV that gets 25 mpg. But this is all pointless because nobody is comparing gas prices now with what they were 20 years ago. Fuel economy was about the same one year ago as it is now, and gas was significantly cheaper. Hell, if you look at the 2024 election, it was over a dollar a gallon cheaper. People notice when it costs an extra $20 to fill the tank, and it's not exactly an occasional purchase.
Your modestly cherry-picking a low price during the time frame.
https://www.macrotrends.net/3591/us-gasoline-prices
And to be perfectly fair for affordable it would be better to compare to a wage index. Inflation comp makes sense to compare too but affordability would be wages.
Just eyeballing peak war gas prices are inflation adjusted basically 2006. Wage adjusted guessing 30% cheaper. Adjusted for fuel efficiency even cheaper. And some reason I remember back than seeing north of $5/gallon though I’m guessing that data isn’t adjusting for taxes.
Looked at a Brent crude chart and it peaked $12 higher in 2008 then the highest price during the Iran War. Oil is definitely a lot cheaper today than what we’ve had historically.
Better comparison is what gasoline prices were January 2025 when Trump took office vs last few months. By macrotrends, it's $3 vs $4, a 33% increase. Younger voters possibly didn't even exist in 2006, they don't care about that.
But that’s just not a lot of money to most workers. Like 5-10 a week. It’s copium to say the election swung on a minuscule expense. Gasoline just isn’t a big budget item like it use to be because of fuel efficiency.
Plus Americans get all that money back since we now produce our own oil. Texas elected a Dem and all the oil money significantly goes to texas.
This feels like copium blaming gas prices
The big swing in Texas was Hispanic voters. I think the takeaway is once you have immigrants you can’t keep out more of them in a Democracy. Your only choice is fascism or figuring out how to run ethnic politics.
We probably need to make a deal with Hispanics to block immigrants from any other country.
You're making the same mistake that Republicans (well, Trump at least) did on the campaign trail where you handwave away voter concerns. "Well, I did some calculations and the increased prices as a result of my policies are only costing the average family $514.64 per year. You should be able to afford that." isn't a good message. Inflation is 100 basis points more than when Biden left office. Biden telling the American public that inflation was transitory and that no government response was necessary was bad politics. Trump telling the American public that cost of living isn't even an issue and, by the way, look at how great this gold-covered ballroom you'll never attend an event at is is even worse politics.
Those were the same Hispanic voters who propelled trump to a 14-point win in Texas in 2024. For years, Democrats assumed that they owned the Hispanic vote (which was always a curious position since they loved George W. Bush) and got owned themselves when they took the vote for granted. Then the Republicans made huge Hispanic gains and immediately pissed them away by assuming the same, even going so far as to redistrict based on this shift. The takeaway here is that Hispanic voters are ultimately like any other voters and will respond to the same things that other voters respond to. And this only considers Texas; it doesn't explain similar leftward shifts in Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Mississippi, and other places with much smaller Hispanic populations.
I’m not making a mistake on gasoline prices (and your $500 calculation seems super high). Voters are possibly stupid on things like this - or it’s just pure copium and something else so going on.
And to your second paragraph the point of politics is NOT gainful employment. It’s wielding power. My point is once immigrants are here there is no way to prevent more. They will always side with their non-American tribal outsiders. Hispanics hate Dems because simplistically they are gay. They hate GOP because we wanted to deport their illegals. I’d rather shoot our shot at fixing the country than just have some dude with GOP next to his name sitting in the White House.
To the latter point I guess Im a fascists now. I think as a native my vote should count more than someone who showed up yesterday most likely illegally. I’m not sure what solution we have now. If Trump could figure out how seize power I have no problem backing him.
And my reading of the political scene is technologically the State has more power to protect itself than ever before but the electorate is more fractured than ever before. There is no silent majority to back America anymore. It’s tribe versus tribe now.
Dude, that wasn't a calculation. It was an arbitrary number somewhere in the ballpark of your $5–$10/week estimate. But beyond that I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I thought it was some kind of explanation of why the Republicans lost so badly. If the only explanation you can come up with is that everybody else should have the same opinions as you, even when those opinions run contrary to core constitutional principles, then I don't know what to tell you.
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