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I dunno, yeah I saw people calling the election the moment it happened, but it sure didn't feel so certain to me.
It's 'bellwether' and has nothing to do with the way the wind is blowing. The bellwether is the lead sheep of a flock ("wether" being the ovine equivalent of "steer"), so named because the shepherd attaches a bell to him.
He was cited for driving at that speed on Interstate 64 in New Kent County. From my travels there, I don't think that anyone could safely drive that stretch of road at that speed, regardless of their skill level. There are a lot of questionable sightlines.
One of the posters here (I think his name is Anti Populist now) posted the Seltzer poll. I, among others, pointed out how absurd the cross sectionals were and how inconsistent it was with prior polls. He kept on ignoring it predicting a Harris victory right up until she lost.
I rubbed his nose in it because when people make predictions on vibes while ignoring the obvious holes they should be reminded to improve their thought processes going forward. He then blocked me. So yeah, people here were gung ho on harris until she lost.
I do think he's definitely a bell weather more than anything but a bell weather does show you which way the wind is blowing.
The backlash being faced by Klien, Derek, Yglesias and Buttigieg is baffling. Everything they've said has been polite, non-accusatory and measured. Yet, they're being treated like Nazis by left social-media.
I'm not sure how this is baffling given the behavior of the "progressive left" over the past 15 years. Responding polite, non-accusatory, and measured constructive criticism for the purpose of self-improvement from their less extreme allies as if they were Nazis has been standard operating procedure for about that long.
The surprising thing to me now is that Klein actually decided to meaningfully criticize them, given how hard he was supporting them until very recently, even while some of his peers like Yglesias had already started doing so years ago. The stuff around Klein and Weiss recently are the only signals I've seen that indicates that the failures of the progressive left to actually support progress is actually facing meaningful backlash.
I think the turning point for conservatives was actually the first assassination attempt, not the election itself.
I think its an effort thing. Dem mayors instruct their police to not even try to stop rampant arson and not to bother investigating afterwards, and on the off chance they do then the Dem DA doesn't prosecute it. But Biden had the FBI spend a shit ton of man hours combing through every source possible for every minor rioter who could be charged with anything at all.
I would prefer we use at least a minor portion of that effort arresting arsonists and burying them under the jail. As it stands, the effect is "rioters who are pro-dem causes get to have authorities look the other way, right wingers get the Eye of Sauron for 4 years straight", with the added bonus of lefties bringing J6 up every time they want to say their enemies are worse than them, and the dem friendly media reported on every single arrest and trial for a J6er, keeping it in the mind of the public.
Again, I don't care about the J6ers, they are morons let them hang. But selective punishment on this scale, and where what I think is the far worse crime gets the pass while the lesser gets the book thrown at them, is worse. If you guys wanted me to care about J6 so much you had a whole summer to exact some kind of punishment on rioters, you didn't, and now here we are.
It's hard to remember because for some reason there really was a major loss of memory once Trump was elected. I'm not blaming anyone, and I'm not being sarcastic; it was true. I remember the day before, almost everyone in the Motte lamenting that Harris was going to win, and the day after everyone taking about how Harris sucked and Trump's win was inevitable, and conservatives were in such a strong position in the culture war. I'm not sure how it happened like this, and I don't think it was exclusive to the Motte, either, but I'm not certain about that. But it's a really strange phenomenon.
I think it's best to treat that last "if" as implication rather than the subjunctive. At which point the Principle of Explosion applies.
But as a straight white male with a job, I occasionally wonder what exactly Team Blue could ever do to entice me to vote for them in a national election (short of entirely abandoning 75%+ of their policies).
I’ve often wondered this myself and I’m not sure I’ve ever come up with a good answer. I wonder what other Motte users would say for this question
It is like they are trying to somehow say "white dudes" with a Hard-R if you know what I mean. On paper it sounds neutral, but they way they say it...
I'll agree with that in theory. In practice, note that "in appropriate conditions" requires "when the highway designers kept sight lines clear enough for that speed, including to any intersections or on ramps where someone might be trying to enter the highway after checking for traffic expected to be near the speed limit". Since highway designers never actually design for 115mph on purpose, you're pretty much stuck with places where it happened by accident, where the land was so flat and empty that you can't not see the road ahead of you for miles. I've had friends who enjoyed stretches of road like that in New Mexico, but I don't think any of them exist in Virginia.
My friends mostly enjoyed those stretches, I mean. One of them totaled his first car when a deer ran out into the road in front of him. In my experience most people who love driving that fast give other cars roughly the same consideration that he gave that deer, an implicit unexamined assumption that the highway ahead will be either clear or occupied by drivers doing the speed limit, that nobody will suddenly appear in front of them at surprisingly low or no speed. That assumption is usually correct, but it only has to be incorrect once.
I have a super liberal friend who told me, "If Biden had dropped out earlier and they'd had a real primary, and Kamala had won, I think I would have voted for her."
I don't see it as directly insulting as the hard R so much as...patronizing? Juvenile?
It's just a weird way for supposedly adult political consultants to talk consistently about a group. Trying to think of a parallel.
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