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Goodguy  1d ago (text post)   Edited 1d ago   8015 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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The big lesson here IMO should be properly understanding the mandate. It won't be learned, but it should. The American people primarily care about bread and butter topics as always, and your win on those as the "best of two evil" does not mean free reign to throw away economic concerns and start doing whatever you want. Like it or not most Americans still think of the parties as giant douche vs turd sandwich, and if you're turd sandwich, you do not pile on extra shit after a win.

But that's exactly what happened. Consider the infamous "Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you" ad. The underlying message painted Harris as an idealogue concerned about irrelevant topics like trans people, and Trump as caring about the real topics. But what did Republicans take away from this? The exact opposite of what they should have learned, they hyper focused on culture war shit. They spent their ad focus and money saying tranny 50 times in a mirror hoping to summon the voters again, and it failed.

And likewise with overreach. Voters are very clear that they don't like trans people participating in their preferred sports, but in general they actually trust Democrats more on the overall topic!. Most voters don't want big daddy government coming in and repressing people's access to hormone treatments or discriminating in employment or anything like that.

Focusing the political discussion on trans people both makes the GOP look out of touch and cruel.

This has happened with Trump on basically every topic. The average voter does not consider the US in an existential crisis that needs 100 million deportations. They want a secure border where criminals can't get in, but they don't want a border so shut down and so hard to get visas with that their favorite voice actors are barred from entering. Yes a single concert by itself isn't a big deal, but it's not just a single concert. It is just one example of the many ways that overreach and a misunderstanding of the border mandate happened. Yet putting extremists in charge who want to limit foreigners of all kinds and of all types into the country inevitably leads to these fuckups.

And then if it wasn't for all this shit, there's also Trump specific problems too. Even if you're a hardcore conservative who thinks two years of idealogical overreach is worth the political sacrifice, Trump is barely even doing that well! He's focusing on his ballroom, the reflecting pool, threatening to invade Canada and Greenland over and over! He's probably spent more time on the white house's furnishings than he did trying to pass real legislation with the trifecta. Certainly even a hardcore idealogue is well aware of how no voter gives a shit about that and watching the president ignore the Real Issues in favor of such nonsense is a bad look right?

The good news for Republicans is that the Dems won this election so hard that they might get cocky overreach on their new mandate and fuck things up. The bad news is that Trump is still president and will not only be causing new issues (if 2025 Trump is threatening to invade Canada, maybe 2028 Trump is threatening to bomb France. Who knows at this point?) but just by having the seat and being the guy in charge will be eating the blame for general problems.

Good post. Trump II has been a colossal, pathetic waste of what was really a historic opportunity for the American right. I’d add that this is the exact same error the Biden admin committed, taking a mandate for “stabilize the government and focus on things like physical infrastructure and protecting the economy” as an opportunity to go Full Woke, then getting thrown out four years later. Trump’s own personal… idiosyncrasies… just happened to turn it to 11 this time around and speedrun the effect.

Good post. Trump II has been a colossal, pathetic waste of what was really a historic opportunity for the American righ

Unfortunately, that opportunity only existed because of him in the first place, so you can't have one without the other.

You don’t think that a Romney Republican would have wiped the floor with Harris/Biden? Trump is a unique candidate to be sure in motivating the base, but he also won against uniquely unlikeable candidates in Clinton and Harris.

Romney Republicans had zero chance against Clinton or Harris

edit links with past discussions about this topic

No, I think any other Republican candidate gets beat in both those elections, though narrowly. Trump boosted Republican voting by low-propensity voters far beyond what it had previously and had major downballot coattails. Given demographic trends, I think it's unlikely any non-populist Republicans can win national elections. ETA: Obviously, if Hillary won the first time, Biden and probably Harris never happens anyways, it would be 8 years of Clinton

any other Republican candidate gets beat in both those elections, though narrowly

The question is poorly conceived. A Romney Republican isn't going to get nominated in 2020 or 2024 in a world in which Trump wins in 2016, even if he dies of diet coke poisoning in his first term. The GOP had already been running hot with a populist revolt when Trump won the nomination, and that only intensified over the course of the first term. If Trump dies of health complications or just decides he's bored of being president, the likely successor is someone like Ted Cruz cosplaying as Trump. And that would go very poorly - the hardcore Trumpists, at least so far, seem to accept no substitutes, while the people who disdain Trump are not going to be drawn back by that messaging.

On the other hand, if Trump just... doesn't run in 2016, I think the likely nominees (Cruz or Rubio, neither of whom are really Romney Republicans, but close enough) handily beat HRC. Clinton was a WEAK candidate who would have lost to almost any credible Republican after eight years of a Democratic presidency on sheer thermostatic backlash if nothing else.

Trump boosted Republican voting by low-propensity voters far beyond what it had previously and had major downballot coattails.

He also repels a lot of traditionally centrist demographics like suburban professionals and has likely calcified a massive amount of winnable votes as near-permanent Democrats. And the suburban professionals vote every year.

I don't agree at all. Obama was still very popular in 2015 (for a lame duck President) and Clinton was the designated successor for his political juggernaut of a coalition. She had experience in the outgoing admin, national politics, and Presidential administration, and had a huge base of institutional DNC support. Bill was still widely liked. She was at least as well positioned as HW Bush was after Reagan.

He also repels a lot of traditionally centrist demographics like suburban professionals and has likely calcified a massive amount of winnable votes as near-permanent Democrats. And the suburban professionals vote every year.

They had already been lost to the Obama coalition and weren't coming back. Certainly not for Cruz or Rubio.

And how would said Romney Republican get into a position to do that? Nikki Haley tried and lost, fair and square.

She lost in the primary to Trump so I’m slightly confused how she would not be a potential counterfactual that could have been the candidate if not for Trump “creating the opportunity”. We would be talking a more traditional style of campaign and policy, probably.

Your response brushed aside the contention that pusher_robot had, that the race against Harris/Biden was only because Trump created the opportunity in the first place. You'd have to establish some mechanism for him exiting the race after his first term. He couldn't and didn't serve just one term, because he's Trump, and he doesn't work like that.

As for my opinion, probably a Romney Republican really could have beat Harris/Biden, and I was really hoping that Nikki Haley would get the nomination.

All it would have taken was him deciding he was too old and lazy and just wanted to golf all day or something. This does not seem that crazy. I do not agree at all that Dem victory would have been inevitable if not for the low propensity voters Trump got support from.

I still don’t understand this “creating the opportunity” idea. The race was always going to be closely contested Democrat vs Republican, in any of 2016, 2020 or 2024.

All it would have taken was him deciding he was too old and lazy and just wanted to golf all day or something.

I am moderately convinced that "leaving the interns in charge" was precisely the main issue with the Biden administration. Voters elected an old man expecting old-school policies and got, well, whatever that was.

I'm not completely convinced that isn't an issue for the current administration, either.

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