The character limit actively discourages me from answering.

And notably that prediction doesn't require he be a particularly strong candidate. Maine is a close state in normal years and all signs point to a pretty dramatic blue wave coming up.

It's always been clear they felt class solidarity towards a rich failson like Planter. The fact that they literally used to get wasted with him is just the chef's kiss on top.

Maybe, though not for long. Our electorate inevitably throws a hissy fit and decides they want change from whoever's in power, and negative polarization is so intense that it doesn't take many loses to make a party desperate enough to compromise. But honestly, I'd take that.

Yes, but that's just a poll. If actual election results show his support base is concentrated among wealthy college educated voters, then surely people will adjust their priors about who candidates like Platner appeal to.

Oh definitely, they made a lot of noise and had a real effect on the party. But not only is it unclear we're getting that, there's no reason to expect an incumbent bloodbath if we do. And I don't think that reality matches a lot of people's vibe.

Worth noting the actual tea party defeated very few incumbents. Their success was mostly helping idiots win open primaries, and scaring incumbents into being worse.

I don't think that's really fair. They just want to replicate the Tea Party's legacy of blowing winnable senate seats and electing incompetent grifters.

People are going to drive themselves insane with this death watch though. Because you're right, old people routinely look unwell for years before they die. They reach a point they can barely move, and STILL they have years left. I don't know how people don't know this?

"Supporting DSA makes you crazy" sounds like petty snark, but there's genuinely no sane theory of US politics that has any role for them, which means rationalizing them isn't possible without becoming unhinged.

This is a man who gets so bored in meetings that he randomly gets up and starts rambling about his ballroom obsession. He's not some nefarious schemer, he's a blob of poor impulse control and self delusion shoved into a vaguely human shaped sack.

Are they marks, or are they defending him so aggressively because they recognize him as one of their own?

Trump has never won an election where Republicans weren't favorites, and he's overseen pretty miserable down ballot performance. There's a strong case that his schtick worked in the primary but hurt him everywhere else, and that we risk doing the same without the Republican structural advantages.

He's describing the correct position. "Hate the Iranian regime but not stupid enough to recklessly attack them" is literally the exact correct position. Hell, he's not a complete tankie, so it's probably his position. Just staggering levels of irony poisoning.

Can not be stressed enough how much that is Donald Trump's official stated position. He ranted constantly about how we were weak and our enemies laughing at us, and promised if elected he would make us strong by killing our enemies without regard for rules or civilian deaths or any other weakness.

The amount of painful trial and error required to make securities markets work has been staggering. Making "prediction markets" even vaguely non-fraudulent would be much harder, with none of the economic utility securities markets provide. Absolutely no moral argument to let them exist.

That is literally a thing that happened. There's video of him before the Iraq war complaining that spending so much time talking about it made us look weak.

Talking about violence makes Trump feel big and strong and so he does it constantly. He was EXTREMELY open about the fact that if elected he would do shit like this. You can't blame him for the peace candidate stuff, he never even pretended that was who he is.

There was no fraud. Donald Trump loves to threaten violence, it makes him feel big and strong, so he talked about doing this constantly. He promised he would use force against anyone who dared oppose him. He ran OPENLY as the war candidate. There was no fucking fraud.

There's also a real strong likelihood they're not whiffing as bad as you think, because experts tend to exaggerate the importance of little details in their area of focus.

See also "authentic"

If I have to listen to people demanding the Democrats deselect Fetterman, you get to deal with whatever yank nonsense we come up with.

I'm more than a little dubious about all those scenarios. But I'm really, really not an expert on UK politics, so I could be completely misjudging things.

I feel like there are 3 "good sign" theories - the Greens really are viable to consolidate as the main left party and defeat Reform, this is a wake-up call that will make Labour change and consolidate the left, or the anti-reform coalition is large and strategic voting can replace consolidation.

You can't appeal to the American people, because when a politician talks about an issue it becomes less popular, and you can't boss around senators, because they get elected themselves and they don't answer to you. Change is absolutely possible, but the bully pulpit doesn't drive it.

Some people obsess over their favorite team year round, but they don't expect the games to start out of schedule. I would kill for political obsessives to understand that. Instead they were driving themselves insane demanding action 2 months in.

Has someone tried telling them they're not a PR system?

I honestly don't mean to be as snarky as I probably seem. It's just sincerely, a lot of people follow politics far more than is required to stay informed, and they hate it, and they could just stop.

"Keep our heads down and let Trump become unpopular" is absolutely the right strategy for an electorate that's barely engaged and doesn't particularly like either side. The fact that it makes political hobbyists miserable is a problem they could solve by finding a new hobby.

Honestly those aren't even separate things. Trump's core instinct on trade is the belief that everyone is cheating us all the time, and that belief is mostly projection from his own compulsive fraud.