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Goodguy  1d ago (text post)   Edited 1d ago   8413 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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Biggest loser? Individually? Might actually be Elon Musk. He’s about to get investigated, hauled in front of Congress, bro wasted a half billion dollars almost on one of the worst losses in recent GOP history, tons of people hate him, and Trump is almost certainly NOT going to bail him out either

Why did he decide to tie himself so inextricably to Trump and the GOP? I suppose some of it is his genuine dislike of wokeism. Not doubt he is also a rejection sensitivity dysphoria sufferer and this would have been triggered by the Dems disrespecting him over the electric car summit and so forth. But just as a matter of basic strategy, how were his long-term business aims ever going to be served by not maintaining some manoeuvrability within a two-state system that was always likely to pendulum back and forth?

He's a regulations-hater and Trump also has a strong deregulation agenda. On twitter he kept bringing up how the regulators made him drag up sea creatures and put headphones on them to see if they were distressed by the noise of the rockets, he thought that was absurd.

Also he has a feud with California regarding the general Dem anti-billionaire sentiment.

I don't think it was predictable that Trump was going to go crazy with tariffs and Iran. Nobody expected tariffs, markets least of all, Musk fell out with Trump severely over that (now forgotten).

Nobody expected tariffs

Isn't this the one thing, aside from immigration, that everyone should have expected? Perhaps even moreso than immigration? Trump has been obsessed with tariffs for over three decades.

More tariffs on China and maybe the EU, yes. But tariffs on everyone including allies, jacked up so high and so fast? No. I remember April and the stock market just imploding.

Weren't you surprised to see that when it happened?

I will never be surprised when Trump raises tariffs. He'd probably do it again if he hadn't already (not that that will stop him).

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