mtutiger

This is, unironically, a positive thing.

lol

Even beyond cretins like this guy, just from a couple of conversations I had at work yesterday, I really do think that there are a lot of normie males who take DJT's "that's a state rights issue now" way too much at face value. The lies we tell ourselves...

I hate to agree with Matt Y... But he's spot on here.

They need to up their media game no doubt, but I think engaging R and R leaning media more often does more good than harm and they should do it more often. Outside of Pete Buttigieg, I can't think of one upper echelon D pol that actually does that; Walz/Harris both did some of that at the end with Fox and Harris discussed doing Rogan, but going forward that needs to happen more often.

I agree, and I even like the guy. Setting aside both of our views and just looking objectively, one conundrum here as I see it is that the Democratic Party is a really big tent right now and there are a lot of cross pressures between the historical base of the party (working class, union members) and professional class (suburbanites who have recently folded into the party, tend to be white collar). The EC is a factor here too.... MI/WI/PA (overrepresented by the former type of voter) along with the rest of the deeper blue states all add up to exactly 270 today - but that won't be the case forever.... and even now, you have to compete in states that demographically are more like that latter and for which working class policies don't necessarily land the same way (particularly in GA/NC, which are historically hostile to unions). And along with all of that is the tendency of union members, frankly like most Americans, to signal on culture more than economic policies in today's day and age. The Teamsters fiasco this summer is an excellent example - President Biden did, in fact, bail out their pension fund in late 2022. Yet their national leadership (likely reflecting their wishes of membership, at least to some degree) didn't endorse anyway. I do still think that the environment mattered more than anything else here, but this (along with / in conjunction with their issues with Latino voters) are puzzles that need to be solved. And a lot of that is going to rest on raising the salience of economic issues over cultural ones... I have theories on how that may be achievable, but I'm guessing that a lot of more leftists types wouldn't like them much.

This point after the election reminds me a lot of the May 2024 Detroit Tigers where the Jeff Riger types of Tigers Twitter would just throw out "shoulda signed Matt Chapman" and recommend who needs to "PACK FOR TOLEDO" and "CALL 'EM UP", as if those suggestions were all the panacea (they weren't.... young players performing better was the panacea) I'm not saying that there aren't lessons that need to be learned, but I can tell you right now that it isn't going to be boiled all down into one neat little package that's going to fit into a 2 minute cable hit.

Cable news hits aren't exactly built for nuance, which is a big reason why cable news (left right and center) is garbage.

https://x.com/RalstonReports/status/1854564973437178206 Ralston apparently crunched the numbers for Nevada as well... Seems to line up

Lets do a little math, everyone: 2024 MICHIGAN SENATE RACE Elissa Slotkin Raw Vote Total: 2,690,782 Mike Rogers Raw Vote Total: 2,673,747 2024 MICHIGAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE Kamala Harris Raw Vote Total: 2,715,809 Donald Trump Raw Vote Total: 2,800,060 Difference between Harris/Slotkin: +25,027 Harris Difference between Trump/Rogers: +126,313 Trump [126,313 - 25,027] = 101,286 votes Margin of victory in Michigan for Donald J. Trump in 2024: 84,251 votes. --------------------------------------------------------------- There'll be a lot of questions about how Dems pulled out all these close Senate races despite Trump winning, but this is why. And again, it raises a lot of interesting questions about future election cycles... especially considering this will be the last time Trump's name will be on a ballot.

This is important - it is incredibly popular to sit and pick apart why this has happened (literally everybody and everyone applies their own prescribed reason), but if I had to place a percentage on it, this is at least 80% of why this happened (versus actual campaign tactics, flaws and / or erosion among demos). I don't think people want to discuss this though because picking apart campaign tactics, candidate flaws and / or erosion among demos provides more material for pundits and observers alike over "this environment really sucks for governing parties right now"

It was less pronounced in the Blue Wall states, but the gaps between the Senate race and the Presidential race make you think....

I'm not sure if that option is completely opened until someone is actually confirmed, but could be wrong. Either way, the smaller the margin, the harder it is for the nutters to land some of these top jobs.

Would add Thom Tillis here as well, who is up for reelection in NC in 2026 (probably one of the D's largest targets). This is why every single seat matters... losing Casey in PA hurt a lot, but it could have been so so much worse.

For RFK Jr., Murkowski and Collins are a guarantee, Cassidy/Young (at least) seem likely. RFK Jr. is toxic as hell, Collins is also up for reelection in 2026 (if she runs).

This isn't being talked about enough in this thread either, fwiw.... the Senate could have been orders of magnitude worse. 53-47 with Trump winning the popular vote is a big win

The fact that fluoridation of water is potentially going to become a partisan issue (particularly if RFK Jr. ends up getting anything of responsibility in this administration) is incredibly depressing. EDIT: I do think that RFK Jr., assuming Jacky Rosen ends up winning in NV, would have a *very* tough time getting confirmed for anything.... but still even having the conversation is unnerving to me.

It's the underdiscussed part of all of this that everyone wants to avoid - for as much as frail as Biden is and for as much people have worried about his cognitive health, Trump's comorbidities are so much worse. And the transparency that he has demonstrated with respect to his health has been nonexistent. Not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch, but observing him for all these years and how he operates, does anybody really think that he and/or anyone around him wouldn't try to cover up a stroke if it happened?

Have any of these countries ended vaccine mandates?

One thing that would be an interesting addition to the discussion is the noticeable break between Trump's performance and Senate candidates in this cycle, as well as the fact that in the House, Dems are performing well enough that it could potentially lead to an even smaller majority. There might be a signal there for Dems... some of it Trump related, but some of it also a recalibration of it's thinking on allowing for more heterodox thought within the caucus. I don't think it's a coincidence that two Trump district Ds with heterodox thought compared to the caucus (Jared Golden and Marie Glueskamp Perez), both thought to be in the upper echelon of endangered Ds, are likely to hold on in their races. I understand why this is uncomfortable, but this truly is a country, for better or worse, where culture seems to be downstream of politics. Working class politics isn't enough.

Nobody is upset, I just don't think Scott Jennings (or CNN panels writ large) add much of anything to this discussion. They are a big problem we are in this mess.

Well, we're gonna find out aren't we?

Excellent thread.... seems more valuable than listening to Scott Jennings.

All cable news is garbage. And I don't need some panelist who spends his day shouting at other panelists to tell me what to think.

The House is going to be very very interesting... Like 218-217 in either direction interesting