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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It really depends. I wouldn't be so confident. Most staffers, in general, are pretty powerless, the vast majority spend their time on tasks like the Senator's email and arranging flights and cars. Most of them have to answer calls from constituents which means a lot of time spent talking with what I call "the UFO people". They have to arrange favors for veterans and constituents and write home to help people who have questions about their benefits. Then when they get to actually exercise policy, it's on drafting bills that won't make it out of committee.
There are a few staffers who are very powerful, perhaps more powerful than the average Congressmen. I.e., Susan Collins has been chair of Appropriations, which writes the budget, and she's been around for so long that I bet whoever's served her staff for a long time would have immense and obscure power. But from the outside looking in it's actually hard to make strong pronouncements about which staffers actually have power. It's very opaque.
Also, not all the groypers are necessarily young. Everybody knows who Nick is now and he has some unexpected acolytes. Clearly someone is keeping him well-informed. I don't know enough to say confidently whether those people are powerful or not. Everyone in Washington likes to imagine themselves an insider.
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