Almost certainly helps Yes. Of course anything *could* happen, but most likely case is that lower turnout means disaffected R voters are not showing up.
I guess a week from now we can look at the share of the vote in each county and have a better projection.
I think issue for many people is just, the amount of time it takes for them, or for someone they support, to "put in the work" is so long, and many people enter into politics in moments of crisis, and ignore it otherwise. So the urgency of the moment makes the idea of pushing up the latter feel bad.
One thing that is a big issue for the Stancil style center right liberals is that their best candidates are consistently cowards. No one wants to run a tough and risky race for fear of ending up like Nina Turner, before she jumped on the Bernie train.
Plenty of non-leftist Dem candidates became trash as well. Jared Polis, Ruben Gallego, etc. James Talarico also sucks a lot. He and Gallego and big sports betting/crypto guys for instance. Just generally hard to find good candidates. Republicans also struggling to nominate non-wackjobs.
Lot of people compare Platner/Tulsi Gabbard except unlike Gabbard Platner wasn't a DNC vice chair before becoming a leftist darling. Similarly Nina Turner was prominently connected to both Clintons prior to losing a statewide race in Ohio and jumping on the Bernie train after their support dried up.
The Maine Senate race is really interesting because Platner was clearly a bad choice but the Schumer pushing Mills was also a bad choice and likely to get Graham elected.
What if the Dems simply picked a good candidate? And same for the left.
How has Galveston been looking? If that ended up in single digits Dems would be heavily favored, although of course primary EV is not an ideal indicator.
In some ways I think Field of Glory is more useful for understanding ancient battles than Total War. Sure turn based is not realistic but Total War's realism is a facade or even a straight lie.
How do they support themselves when they are not on campaign or have run out of money from their last campaign? Day laborers or something? Live on dad's/brother's land in a subordinate role?
The more tribal mercenaries I understand how it would work but the Greek ones are a bit confusing. Who takes care of their property which is sufficient to support their equipment and free time to travel around on private campaign?
"That life" is the part I'm interested in. What precisely was their situation that they could simply leave for several months to a year and then just pop back in, but also maybe they died, what happens to their"life"after that? At least in state service there's obvious social support for that stuff.
You did discuss Taenarum saying it was potentially unique.
Do mercenaries in the classical world make enough to live several years without being hired?
In cases without a mercenary marketplace, where do the troops come from and what do they do while not hired?
@bretdevereaux.bsky.social Bret, are you planning to go into any detail about what men who hired out as mercenaries were doing when they weren't on campaign?
The classic fantasy mercenary company has a home base usually near several other local companies.
For anyone who wants to see something on twitter but has no account you can add "cancel" to the regular X url. There's other versions of the same thing but none as convenient as just adding "cancel". so instead of "x.com" it is "xcancel.com" in the url bar.
Even the space feudalism. Well technically it is imperalism but since the common conception of feudalism is ahistorical anyways, why split hairs. "Bow before the emperor! Rudolf von Goldenbaum!" Legend of the Galactic Heroes is full of German, and Libyan kinda, stuff.
People always blathering about English shows appropriating culture, like making it mystical/magical. Have clearly never watched any anime. Full of appropriation of Christian religious imagery or German/French space feudalism.
Ro is one of the better Democrats but he is more like someone who can be in the big tent but can not be a tentpole. As a leader of a leftwing movement he is not viable. But as a supporter he's better than most.
Really reminds me of when my parents were shocked that my cousin was being hassled a bunch by some guys on her Appalachian Trail trip. They have a biased view of hikers, scouts, orienteerers, environmentalists that they are on average much better people than those outside that community.
Ro Khanna *is* left wing, depending on which subset of policies you define as the core of being left wing. America has very confused language around this issue thanks to neoliberalism. But he has several key tech influenced views that make him a bad replacement for someone like Bernie Sanders.
The idea from Stancil that his arguments with people on Bluesky reflect much of anything in the real world is really annoying. Meanwhile more dirty Bernie bros voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton PUMAs voted Obama in 2008.
Working class white women in GA for instance swung a small amount *towards* Kamala vs Biden despite the massive boost Biden had from Covid and the extra voting options. College whites, especially women, swung ~4% towards Kamala vs Biden.
I'm sorry that you don't think the facts are accurate but the pattern was consistent across the whole country. There's a reason certain areas in VA and NJ swung so massively back the other way after Trump showed his non-white supporters that he doesn't discriminate between them.
Electing Gavin Newsom will *not*, 0% chance, reverse that slide. If Dems run Newsome or a similar candidate in 2028 the global economy is going to implode, if we even make it to 2028. You think shit is bad now? What about when every major country is halfway to economic ruin like Russia?
Meanwhile Netanyahu is talking about breaking with America after dragging our name through the mud for the war in Gaza and fucking Schumer still cares more about protecting Israel, a country that doesn't even want him anymore, than doing anything for our collapsing society.
But if they admit they wasted all this time and money they'll look like the morons they are and see massive collapses in stock prices so they are going deeper in prayaing to get lucky before it all falls down. Silver and gold nothing. Fucking copper prices are through the god damn roof.
There are fucking dozens of Dem Senators who have sold out to crypto and AI mega corp tech companies which is why we are perhaps a year away from the collapse of the consumer PC market. Because tech megacorps are hoovering up all the materials and parts for AI that doesn't fucking work.
And the reason young and left people sit out is because for fucking decades, long before Trump was a thing, both center right Dems and far right Republicans have made living in America suck and publically committed to it continuing to suck.
It is in fact Stancil who has been brain poisoned by bluesky, extreme leftists were already just as bad in the past as they are now. But they don't matter. What matters is non-voters turning out for Trump while Dems no longer have a presidential advantage.
The thing that stupid motherfuckers like Will Stancil don't get is that we tried centrist trash candidates *twice* who shit the bed and lost to Trump. Leftists on bluesky are not a large enough population to explain those losses. Kamala quite explictly lost because non-white people swung to Trump...
Sorry but in a world where ICE is dragging away parents who have not even broken law and leaving kids stranded at school, where it glaringly and blindingly obvious that these are fascist thugs not following the law, you can't expect parents to send their kids to a school where a teacher says go ICE.
