mtutiger

Maine and NC are doable but not necessarily easy (Maine probably is easy if Collins actually steps aside). But beyond those two, it's tough sledding. It's not hard to see the House flipping in a Trump Midterm, especially given that they more likely than not will gain seats despite losing he Presidency in a bad environment like this (especially with the modal outcome at this point being somewhere around 220 seats for the GOP)

The Electoral College inhibits third parties as well IMO

Political environment... Not just in the US, it has been toxic worldwide for incumbent parties

Trying to think about how best put this, but the message sent by the voters on Tuesday was about the environment more than anything else IMO. People were pissed off and wanted to punish the administration. That's it. In that context, elevated with only 107 days to go, Harris spent a lot of time and money in the battleground states and, relative to the popular vote nationwide, outperformed in each of them by around 3.5%. And her presence likely saved at least three Senate seats and countless House members who would have been wiped out had Biden stayed the nominee. Journalists in DC are gonna do what they are gonna do to get clicks... The Biden people (who are more guilty than literally anyone on this - many should never work in politics again as far as I'm concerned) are gonna go off record and play the blame game, because of course they are. But the facts are the facts... Maybe there's changes here or there that could have been made, idk... I just don't see how you can look at the full picture and not see how much worse this result could have been.

Maybe the staffer should ask their boss...

I don't think you understand my point. But we'll leave it there

https://x.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1855430284428161399 Pour one out for Kari Lake, folks...

You'll be shocked to learn that he's a podcaster.... retweeting another podcaster.

It's again worth noting that Harris did upwards of 3.5% better in the battleground states than she did nationally.... which suggests that campaign financing / how they spent their money wasn't the issue here.

lol

Probably worth noting one of the few regions to shift left in the Presidential election this cycle was... Western North Carolina

Two pages on, this observation holds up well

I need to start looking that direction as well...

The California races mentioned (Whitesides, Min, Tran) are all breaking in the correct direction and with relatively favorable partisan breakdowns for remaining ballots... Engel and Peltola are a little shakier. My guess is either 220-215 or 221-214 for Rs, a 1-2 seat gain for Ds over the last Congress. But a lot more to count

https://x.com/LisaDNews/status/1855010313495564397 The AP really blew it here... If there are 110k ballots left in PA, the Senate race shouldn't have been called.

I mean, I'm trying not to be mean about it, but by any objective measure, both attempts got a ton of attention. The pages in this thread dedicated to both stand as evidence as far as I'm concerned. I'm just surprised that, even in victory, the whining crying and grievance never ends.

I look forward to the day when performative whining, crying and grievances aren't a main feature of American political discourse. Who am I kidding, an asteroid will probably get us before that happens... lol

Why are you asking me? I don't know, nor do I really care. I was responding this: Pretty vividly remember both of Trump's assassination attempts being treated like very big deals. Not sure what the argument is here. Did the American public just not act viscerally enough to them or something?

Pretty vividly remember both of Trump's assassination attempts being treated like very big deals. Not sure what the argument is here. Did the American public just not act viscerally enough to them or something?

I think there's interesting stuff to unpack and learn about what happened here, but the real substance is going to take time. At this stage, the stuff we get is a mix of emotional catastrophizing from the losing side, gloating from the winning side (or those who are more sympathetic to winning side anyway) and members of the mainsteam media, pundits and strategists coming up with many reasons why the result was what it was (which in a lot of cases center around whatever pet issue interests the media member/pundit/strategist making the argument is most interested in). So I don't blame you for checking out.... I guess I'm too much of a sicko to completely let go and check out, but there's really nothing to be learned or gained from this immediate period of time in terms of engagement.

Doesn't matter the issue, but picked this up from a number of people down the stretch... the idea that Trump wasn't going to do a lot of what he was actually campaigning to do. Regardless of the issue. Took it mostly as a rationalization, but who knows... if he were smart, he wouldn't go full on maximalist on things like immigration or abortion, but I've seen this movie before.

Hell, I have people in my own life who believe, as a country, "we're full".... which, when you look at the demographic cliff we are sitting on (ie. boomers getting older/retiring/dying, being replaced by a smaller amount of people in productive positions), is just a bonkers take.

I mean, they're going to all sorts of stuff.... rounding up illegals, hitting border crossings harder, all of that. We know this already because he campaigned on it. But that isn't really a "reform" of immigration.... that doesn't clean up the asylum process, that doesn't reduce the bureaucratic mess that legal immigration entails, etc. I understand that the punitive stuff is what sends a thrill up everyone's leg, but these are things that need to be addressed. We *should* it easier to adjudicate legit asylum claims and *should* make it easier for people to legally migrate to our country. And my point is that, in an incoming administration that contains Stephen Miller in Trump's ear, there isn't really consensus on whether there is even a need for immigration reform in the first place.

One of the biggest impediments to success in reforming immigration is that there isn't complete and total agreement on what the problem is in the first place, particularly within the GOP. For some, the problem that we have too much illegal immigration, but we need to open up more ability for people to legally immigrate here. For others (ie. the Stephen Miller set), the problem is that we have *too* much immigration period and we need to continue to reduce both illegal *and* legal immigration.

We can all hold competing thoughts in our head at one time: Harris was not the greatest candidate Harris was left with a pretty crummy hand and probably played it about as well as she could Had she not been elevated to the top of the ticket, it would have been a wipeout downballot