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Goodguy  1d ago (text post)   Edited 1d ago   8187 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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Trump voters aren’t going to abandon him because the rest of the GOP let them jail him. They will stay home and 2028 is a slaughter. Somehow they will need to engage the Fuentes vote and pull Hispanics into the fold.

For that reason Vance is dead. A Hispanic like Rubio will help even though he’s almost pure European or you have to bet on Desantis who might even do well with boomers who see him as a true adult. Either one needs blessed by Trump.

Outside of MAGA, Trump is poison now so they really have nothing to lose by dumping him. They are cooked if he is still around in 2028 so might as well do a Hail Mary. Fuentes people will not vote for anyone associated with MAGA or Israel, and he may have enough power to knock off a half percentage of the vote and cause them to lose.

The Hanania and Fuentes crowd were never going to vote for a Republican of any stripe, and are generally viewed with contempt by the voter base (to the extent that the voter base is aware of them at all). Have you ever seen a more "punchable" face than this one? I don't think I have.

Now while I would never underestimate a Republicans' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, fact remains that as of today Rubio's Gulf-Coast Coalition remains the most powerful faction within the GOP's internal politics and anyone looking to win the nomination will either have to go through them or get approved by them.

if you think Fuentes (or at least Fuentes-like beliefs) doesn't have sway with most GOP staffers or volunteers under the age of 35, you can look forward to another electoral disaster

the Florida Mafia's power is connected, and tarnished, at the hip to the Trump sinking ship

I think Fuentes has a lot of pull with the sort of person who posts here, but I also don't believe that anyone here (with the possible exception of @Shakes and @100ProofTollBooth) is voting for a Republican (much less working for one).

fuentes has little pull, but fuentes-like politics is very popular in staffers under 35

voting for a Republican (much less working for one).

well, that's nice but you're wrong

Maybe but I would bet good money that Harris and Biden voters here out number Trump voters by a solid 2 to 1. Ditto Talarico vs. Paxton, and El-Sayed vs. Stevens. While this space has a reputation as being a "right wing" space it's important to remember that it is really only "right wing" within the context of it's founding population of Berkley Area contrarians and edgy-reddit atheists. Pretty much everyone in this forum from @Opt-out to @magicalkittycat would immediately find them selves sorted into the "authoritarian left" quadrant of the political compass if they were dropped into the comments section of someplace like frieghtwaves, ar15.com, or the median IRC channel from the mid 2000s.

I think you are confusing lack of normie Republicans with lack of right wing leaning people. This place has more party line Republicans than it does Democrats. There are essentially no party line Democrats here, it's weird iconoclasts all the way down but I'd be shocked if the vote total doesn't break right.

The last one has been a while so it might have finally switched, but in all surveys on the topic that I'm aware of, themotte has been dominated by heterodox lefties/"grey tribe" above and beyond anything else. See Apple Pie's survey for example, he described it as politically realist & left.

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