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Goodguy  23hr ago (text post)   Edited 20hr ago   6713 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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https://x.com/JDVance/status/2118004988433641835

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone.

Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

  1. End the war
  2. Focus on cost of living/inflation
  3. Put America First
  4. Change our relationship to Israel

In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.

How will the “Israel is our ally” crowd handle this admission from the VP? By the results, Israel is only the ally of the Democrats: they handed the country over to them by instigating a stupid war through the ears and advisors of Trump. They chose their own petty Middle Eastern feud over what’s good for America and American conservatism.

Joe Kent, as the Chief of Staff at the DNI in 2025 and early 2026, was one of only a dozen or so Americans with access to the totality of America’s intelligence across all 18 agencies. He knows things we have never and will never hear of. He resigned from his role in order to call out this dynamic:

Israel knew the war on Iran would not be quick or easy, they just knew they had to get President bought in by killing Ayatollah Khamenei. President Trump he was aware of all these risk factors, but he chose to listen to Benjamin Netanyahu and he chose to listen to very pro-Israel voices within his inner circle. The President was aware of it, but again, he had a very small circle around him saying, “No, no, Iran’s a paper tiger. They didn’t hit you after Operation Midnight Hammer. You were able to, you know, just slide into Venezuela, kidnap the President, There’s already protesters on the street.” This whole thing’s going to be over in three or four weeks. That’s what the Israelis told him. Meanwhile, getting him to sign on to killing the Ayatollah, The Israelis, when I would interact with them, they were always very clear-eyed. They knew that this was not going to be a quick war, but for them, getting us involved in this slog to take out the regime was always their primary objective. And they sold it to President Trump as something that was going to be very easy, knowing that all they had to do was get us bought in.

Further,

When Dubowitz says “for the next two & a half years” he is basically admitting that the initial goal of the pro Israel lobby was to get us into this war knowing that once we were in, it would be very difficult for us to get out. Dubowitz & the Israelis alway knew this would be a very long war, but lied to Trump & the admin with tales of a decapitation strike leading to a popular uprising, resulting in a quick victory. They knew this was a lie. They will continue to lie to get us to do their bidding, regardless of what it costs our nation. Rooting out foreign influence starts with cutting off access to Israeli surrogates like FDD.

And…

Traitors are people who lie and get our troops killed in needless wars that don’t serve our country. The Israeli lobby knows this war has been a disaster for public support, and they are panicking. It’s advocates are working overtime to try and justify the mess they got our country into.

Manipulating & inflating intelligence is how we got into the disastrous Iraq war—we should know better. Unfortunately, thanks to the Israeli lobby & its paid influencers, we’ve ended up in this situation yet again, this time with a much more consequential country and a war that is shaping up to be an even bigger mess.

I know a lot of people here still consider Israel an “ally” or at least a neutral country in the grand scheme of things. Do these midterm results change your opinion? Do they shift you toward seeing Israel as a dangerous “enemy within”?

Announcing that I voted democrat because I didn't like this or that, maybe I was told that I shouldn't like this or that - simplified, I know, but...

We all should know what is good for our lives, the lives of our families, neighborhoods, communities. We should know right now what we should be voting for next election, and the next, and the next. Doing the ultimate cut-your-nose-off to spite your face is unintelligent and should not be allowed.

I declared that there ought to be an intelligence test for US voters back in 2010.

Hypotenuse, harmony, harpy, hiccup. If you need to look up more than one of these words to either spell it correctly or to get its definition, then you should not be voting.

Doing the ultimate cut-your-nose-off to spite your face is unintelligent and should not be allowed.

You appear to believe that outcomes you don't agree with should be against the rules. It is hard to imagine a less productive concept of politics, particularly where you have no rule-making or -enforcing power.

Trump ran on no foreign wars, and then started a stupid, destructive foreign war. Republicans prominently mocked the idea of using government power to help the objectively most disadvantaged and most loyal constituency they had. You think they should be rewarded for these actions?

These “wars” end up in America whether you like it or not. Iran I guess you can say wouldn’t. Venezuela we already had millions getting US benefits here on asylum. While they also destabilized other neighbors.

Republicans prominently mocked the idea of using government power to help the objectively most disadvantaged and most loyal constituency they had.

What is this referring to?

Young white men, the $20 burrito affordability question, prominent Republicans pretending that they're going to balance the budget and that's why intervention in the economy just can't be done.

Can you tell me what policy could have helped the white men? Removing labor market competition they tried to do and was partially successful at. They did a solid job at hitting DEI which removed some roadblocks to jobs. Cutting food stamps and other UBIs in the economy would help with inflation and they should ramp that up.

But for 2 years in power they an ok jump at the “help the white man” levers.

Looting the treasury to give them money directly would have been a pretty good option. Serious retaliation toward the institutions that had been targeting them wouldn't have been bad. But actively mocking them and their concerns was a very bad idea, and a lot of Republicans chose to do that.

Which is why young white men refused to fight in the civil war-by-proxy.

There’s plenty of room for other nations to pick up the 100 dollars on the ground, at least. Ironically, a successful reform party seeking that demographic should probably be female; at least that way you’d have a leader that is at least attracted to the idea they exist.

(Glances at Alberta.)

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