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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Notes -
On the third, the Democrats won big time thanks to Trump, but they were not the only ones whom Trump helped to victory. More so than even with the Dems, the ones I am talking about are a group I have serious reservations about but whom I nevertheless root for in their conflict against Trump.
I am talking about Iran, of course.
Now, for all my faults, I am not a friend of the Iranian regime. They have an atrocious human rights record, and if the Iranian people can kick them out, I will be very happy for them. (They also sponsor murderous terrorist groups abroad, but let him whose government has never sponsored murderous terrorists cast the first stone.)
But I am a big fan of the international rule based order. This means that I want to see war of aggression fail, preferably fail spectacularly. This is why I am also rooting for Ukraine, for example. With Trump's and Bibi's Iranian adventure, there is no debate whose side is the aggressor. So obviously I would prefer for the US to get an expensive, humiliating defeat to reinforce the idea that wars of aggression do not pay off.
The goals of the Iranian regime are pretty aligned to mine in this. They are fighting a defensive war, they want to maintain as much of the status quo (their infrastructure being intact and their soldiers alive) as they can. But they arguably also want to establish a precedent that attacking them is a bad move.
However, their military capabilities are not up for bombing their enemy leadership, military or schools to try for a regime change (not that this worked for Trump either). So they did what was rational for them and suspended the freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz (thereby likewise violating international law). The Commander in Chief of the US military might be impervious to missiles, but he is very much vulnerable to the whims of his electorate, who are in turn vulnerable to economic pressure.
One of their war goals was "establish that attacking Iran is a presidency-ending mistake". I will admit that we are not quite there yet. But their labors have borne fruits, and now we have a regime change in Texas. Saddam Hussein would have given a hand for that.
Another thing Iran has accomplished is driving a wedge between the US and Israel. For most of my life, most Westerners did not have very strong feelings about Israel. Then Hamas (through their unmatched barbarism) incited them into leveling Gaza, killing 70k Palestinians (mostly likely non-combatants) in the process. We have all seen the before-and-after aerial photos, and some of us (me included) started to find that we actually gave a fuck. Then Netanyahu tricked the gullible Trump (who had already proven his usefulness by bombing IRGC officers in his first term) into spending a few dozen billions on bombing Iran, a move which helps Israel a lot more than it helps Americans.
Now, it is not like AIPAC does not have a majority in Congress anymore or anything, but the mere threat of people voting against their candidates is already constraining what they can do. Hence the decision of Trump and Netanyahu to get rid of the military aid (or at least be a bit more discreet about it). In the very least, it seems safe to say that no future US president will be roped into military action by Israel without carefully considering 'but what if this backfires domestically?'
Obviously Iran has not won yet, but I think the midterms were the most significant development in the conflict. It is a clear sign that the US is not willing to bear the expenses of the war indefinitely. Nor have any other countries been very enthusiastic about defending the freedom of navigation with their navies.
Now, ideally, the US would just pay reparations to Iran and Iran would allow innocent passage again, but realistically that is not going to happen. Still, I do think the US is going to tire of escorting tankers before Iran tires of attacking them, so in the long term we will either allow them to charge tolls or cut some other deal with them.
Its tough to lose a PR was against Iran and Hamas, but Israel did it. It will be interesting to see how rhetoric around this will change among republicans.
Iran, maybe, but Hamas has perfected the fine art of "shooting from behind their own children, and then when there's return fire displaying the dead body as Israel's fault."
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