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Goodguy  1d ago (text post)   Edited 1d ago   8417 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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One unexpected winner of yesterday's elections: The State of California. Not only did the wealth tax fail but Prop 42 banned future wealth taxes and also retroactive taxes.

As California staved off the worst, Texas seems destined to start its own decline. Just like everyone said would happen, all the Californians who fled to Texas brought their politics with them. Now they can enjoy high taxes and dismal weather at the same time! I hope you're happy, Joe Rogan.

Personally, I never got the appeal of Texas. California, though. Losing that one to the communists hurts.

California is actually possibly better placed than a lot of other states; boomer greed has made a lot of socialist initiatives hard to implement, Mexicans are more centrist than FOB Guatemalans, Haitians and Hondurans, and the demographics of the three big cities are better than a lot of big East Coast cities. Local governments are powerful, even LA has cities like Beverly Hills and Irvine where they actually enforce the law.

They also have, like Illinois and Michigan, a Democratic machine that is so corrupt that it actually serves as a kind of bulwark against the DSA / socialist lobby.

Corruption can be negotiated with. True believers are who you have to worry about.

Which class Newsom and the CDP fall into left as an exercise for the reader.

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