Beto lost by like 2 points. Paxton is a very weak candidate, this looks to be a very bad Republican year. It's honestly not that big a longshot. People need to get more jaded about fantasies and less jaded about stuff that could actually get better.

Oh wait, they're not complaining about this cycle, they're going back to 2020... so unless they have a magic plan for inflation they're just bitter morons.

It's simultaneously mostly correct and a complete misunderstanding of American politics. After an election most of the country is done with politics and you can not change that, the president is always BY FAR the main character, and negative polarization always rules.

That is an incredibly random comparison - but being standard Bluesky age I grew up on that show and I'm absolutely here for it.

Yes but I'm sure you're very comfortable with the assertiveness needed to navigate the healthcare system, or at least code as the type of person doctors feel the need to cater to.

But have you considered that he also likes art? And that his incredibly relevant love of art gave him the key insight needed to not defeat the rebels that one time?

Rebels was shockingly decent, but absolutely Thrawn was a generic badguy in it, and they would have been much better off without the bad fanfiction. His lost cause character doesn't fit that context, and they needed such contrived reasons to explain why this supposed genius kept letting them win.

You see it on here all the time. Even his opponents are convinced every stupid thing he does is some nefarious 4D chess move. But I swear to god, he's just really stupid. He has no impulse control. There is no higher meaning, it's all just the poorly controlled emotions of a particularly dim child.

Eh, not really. Someone who compensates for their social deficits by becoming very good at observing what people react positively to, that's actually a standard autistic type. Autistics can become frighteningly good at manipulation.

Turns out liberal professionals are just as vulnerable to affinity bias as anyone else.

That's the key point. It's plausible (if unlikely) to get a random skull without knowing it was a Nazi tattoo. It's not possible to see it over and over for 20 years on SS uniforms without noticing it was the exact symbol on your chest.

Trump took every opportunity to talk about his love of war, but they needed a peace candidate to validate their grievance against the establishment so they invented one, and now they're pretending they were lied to.

Thanks. Now my shame at knowing that story can be complete.

A very stupid man declared there would be no bananas under global socialism. He had a ton of journalist fans so his generic dumb lefty take got more attention than it deserved. Cassie jumped in to support him, citing her love of cocaine as a similar decadent capitalist treat to bananas.

We know the exact day Trump will leave office. We've known since he was elected, it's not going to change. Nothing significant is going to happen until the midterms, and even if the midterms are a rout he'll still finish out his term. That's the timeframe, it is what it is.

Because caring about politics is treated as moral necessity in their affinity groups, very few of them admit to themselves that they don't care. Instead they have all this resentment at being made to care about something they don't, and they vent that through their politics.

You're absolutely right about the cost of normalizing skinhead shit in both parties. And the boost to the grifter industrial complex will hurt the party elsewhere. But man, the marginal value of a single senate seat is so high...

Terrible position to be in, disgusted with the people who put us here

I'm normally very pragmatic about that kind of slop, but dear god Donal Trump is just sitting there begging to take the blame. He actually did it! It's actually his fault, and everyone can see it's his fault, and they need to yell at him for it.

Sure, but notably those weren't Donald Trump's issues with Iraq. He complained loudly at the time that we were taking too long preparing, he's said countless times that because he was strong he could have just won the war easily and took the oil. He made very clear this would be his "strategy".

A lot of people saying #1 are part of demographics that used to be a lot more Republican. A lot of them would have been Reganites, and they would have sounded exactly the same explaining why the moochers and parasites deserved their disdain.

I think the urgent short term importance of the vote outweighs that - which is what I'll be reminding myself constantly while I watch the entitled failson get handed a senate seat in a blue wave. Over and over, every time the dishonest self centered creep speaks, "we need the vote"

US parties need to form half the electorate into a coalition. No reasonable person can expect a coalition like that to cater to their personal ideology.

You laugh, but if Britain won I'm pretty sure the rules state we have to start calling it rounders, and did you really want that?

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.