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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Part of the problem for Vance and any other Republicans who are performatively distancing themselves from Trump is that a substantial proportion of Republican primary voters still mostly like him and are unlikely to hate him before 2028.
Not only can Trump blame all problems between now and 2028 on a Democratic congressional majority preventing him from doing anything (and he will be persuasive to enough people in doing so) which will ensure he retains at least a core loyal base, but he will also (i) respond extremely poorly to criticism from inside the party and (ii) will be very public in endorsing a preferred candidate or candidates.
This means that even if a Trump-skeptical candidate wins the primary, which would be difficult, they are likely to be heavily bruised by a primary campaign in which he will feature as a looming presence. Trump, who remains a vindictive and capricious person with little loyalty to party, would then also likely criticize them throughout the actual presidential campaign period, reducing turnout in his core boomer base and making an actual victory almost impossible.
In the alternate scenario, if a Trump-endorsed candidate wins the primary, he will require Trump at rallies and in media more broadly to drive turnout among his base to win, which means that he will never be able to criticize him even slightly, and in turn that obviously means that he is unlikely to win swing voters.
That’s why their only hope is to backstab him now. He’s guilty of numerous crimes so this time they can just let Democrats take him out. Trump can’t be president in 2028 if they have any hope of winning. He has to be completely out of the picture and discredited. If he had any integrity he’d resign, but we all know that will never happen.
So in this scenario they quietly or overtly threaten him with impeachment (ie supporting an inevitable Dem impeachment vote) and he pardons himself for absolutely everything, then resigns to give them what they want.
He then spends the next two years talking about his betrayal. All the while, the Republicans are still in control of the presidency, his base is completely fractured with many more conspiratorial supporters thinking he was backstabbed by Epstein RINOs or something, and they lose in a landslide in 2028.
Vance cannot win a presidential election, or probably even a primary.
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