2022 Midterms

[Cthulhu 2020]

So here is the thing. Trump won a primary with the conservative apparatus, communication included, against him. What stops him from winning again? They can attack him for the next year but if he runs, he will give them a run for their money. And he will run, if anything because it will allow him to claim that any investigation against him while he is a primary candidate (if not a presidential candidate) is purely political; which is nonsense; while it may well be political it very much is based on fact.
And the same thing with the primaries for house and senate seats; GOP voters may love to try and distance themselves from the MAGA crowd but quite a lot of those MAGA candidates did win a primary challenge.
MAGA is just the better branded version of the Tea Party and has been here for more than a decade. The idea that the GOP can just shake them off for 2024 seems ludicrous to me. They will do their best to keep Trump out. But their chances of keeping all the MAGA candidates out are next to zero.

Lack of momentum. Mountains of controversies and naked corruption. While I'm sure plenty of R's will hold their nose and vote Trump if he's the candidate again, I wouldn't be surprised if there's overall conservative apathy if Trump runs again. Not gonna bank on it. We DO NOT need, want, or desire a second Trump term at all. We actively reject it. But it's going to be far more of an uphill battle.

2016 was a perfect storm. The GOP spent the entirety of the Bush presidency throwing nontroversies at Hillary. Then when she lost in the primary to Obama, it was very clear she'd be the candidate for 2016. So the GOP got another 8 years to throw as many controversies at the wall to see how many would stick. All those nontroversies created an image that Hillary was corrupt, that all the investigations she'd been under was the "Where there's smoke, there's fire" bit. Like, CLEARLY she must be corrupt if she's been investigated 52 times even if there was no wrongdoing found every time. Because clearly, she's being politically protected.

Trump will have that same uphill battle, though it's different in that more Democrats CARE whether their politicians are corrupt than conservatives, so there's more apathy. But there will still be conservative apathy.

[Breccia]

Oh I get the party knows. I am not sure the members know just yet

From the quotes we're seeing, the absolutely do know that. Did you see Greene backed McCarthy?

[Grinning Serpent]

He made a third party because he's done with two party politics! It's a great party! Bipartisan support!

But when repeatedly pressed to discuss what policy positions the party holds and what they stand for the best he can muster is, "We stand for moving forward on a new path." and that's about it. Just hammering that "Forward Party" messaging repeatedly because it's all about messaging and policy doesn't really matter in politics.

Gross. Well, I just wanted someone that would put UBI on Congress' minds, more than anything else. If we don't plan ahead it's going to get really bad when increasing automation starts putting more and more "unskilled laborers" out of jobs and there aren't jobs left for them to do because they were never trained or educated for more "skilled labor."

Historically, a bunch of idle, angry people is how you get (internal) wars starting.

- - - Updated - - -

So something else I've not seen mentioned: The GOP death count due to COVID may have tipped the scales in certain state races. I don't know if we can blame/thank Trump for that, or if there was going to be a major pushback against COVID without the help of the giant orange turd.

It's theorized that in certain tight races, the imbalance of GOP voter deaths tipped the scales in favor of Dems.

https://twitter.com/charles_gaba/sta...66937064538113

EDIT:



I'm not HAPPY that anyone has died (Except, you know, invading Russian soldiers, but that's another thread), it just seems that the GOP screwed themselves over in at least 1 race because of their vaccine hesitancy and outright conspiratorial views.

Yes, I've seen others mention this as well. It makes sense. I have less pity than you do, though. Ultimately, we are responsible for our own actions. It's crucially important to recognize when you're in an information silo (or echo chamber if you prefer) and spend time getting outside of it.

Certain subsets of those people who were too lazy or complacent to spend time outside their silos are now dead. The only pity is that it's those people who are dead, not the people who orchestrated and organized the misinformation that lead to them being dead. I suppose there's no legal, legitimate way to charge and convict those leaders for the deaths of those that they lied to.

I wouldn't object to extra-legal solutions, though. More Punisher, less Batman.

[Lynarii]

I wouldn't object to extra-legal solutions, though. More Punisher, less Batman.

I would. The moment you say that it is okay to employ 'extra-legal' solutions on groups of people you dislike, you lose the right to complain about said groups employing 'extra-legal' solutions on you. It legitimizes all the backwoods militias engaged in domestic terrorism, and says that the Jan 6th riots would have been fine if it had been the team you like doing it (because what were they doing, if not attempting to go 'extra-legal' on politicians they disagreed with?).

The rule of law in the US may be bruised and reeling, but I don't think abandoning it altogether is a good path forward.

[Spectral]

I wouldn't object to extra-legal solutions, though. More Punisher, less Batman.

Less of both. Individuals settling on political violence due to their beliefs robs all political and government leaders of legitimacy and safety. There are, of course, times where that becomes justified in rebellion against a genuinely tyrannical situation. In the context of the United States, the correct direction for the temperature is down, not up. If you settle on a license for violence, it will not be a one-way license.

[Grinning Serpent]

Less of both. Individuals settling on political violence due to their beliefs robs all political and government leaders of legitimacy and safety. There are, of course, times where that becomes justified in rebellion against a genuinely tyrannical situation. In the context of the United States, the correct direction for the temperature is down, not up. If you settle on a license for violence, it will not be a one-way license.

And it's inevitable. Turning the temperature down just creates an environment for cholera to grow in your stew, or whatever analogy you want. At some point, you just need to accept that it's time to throw the damn thing out and start over with a better plan.

Like, we're only focusing on the biggest examples of miscarriage of justice and outright injustice in our country, not the literally daily abuses of power and privilege committed and where there is no recourse, no justice.

It's obscene that such things happen and the perpetrators walk free and unchallenged. We put down stray dogs with more right to life and freedom.

[Lynarii]

And it's inevitable. Turning the temperature down just creates an environment for cholera to grow in your stew, or whatever analogy you want. At some point, you just need to accept that it's time to throw the damn thing out and start over with a better plan.

A better plan is not allowing every psychopath with a gun and a chip on their shoulder to be the arbiters of who deserves to live and who deserves to die.

[Grinning Serpent]

A better plan is not allowing every psychopath with a gun and a chip on their shoulder to be the arbiters of who deserves to live and who deserves to die.

Sure. But I also don't feel like we should be letting criminals walk free, either. Nor do I think we should waste money and effort on imprisoning these people. We elected a fucking *DA* to the Vice President office and she will be President if Biden retires for one reason or another. Democrats have also shown a complete lack of interest in actively pushing for police reform (because of course those fence-fucking centrists like cops) and Republicans obviously don't care, since the cops are brutalizing and oppressing people they hate anyway.

So where's the optimism here? We're just gonna have to keep looking the other way for another twenty or thirty years and hope that maybe some day we hire someone that gives a shit and gets some minuscule amount of progress in?

And that's just for the mundane stuff - the white-collar criminals will continue to be completely free of punishment for their crimes.

[Edge-]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...race-rcna57136

But what’s not immediately clear to recipients is how little of that money is going to Walker's campaign: just a dime for every dollar given by small donors.

Walker’s campaign, which has trailed Warnock’s in fundraising throughout the election, is asking fellow Republicans to stop their fundraising practices — or at least to start sharing more with the candidate.

"We need everyone focused on winning the Georgia Senate race, and deceptive fundraising tactics by teams that just won their races are siphoning money away from Georgia,” Walker campaign manager Scott Paradise said Monday.

“This is the last fight of 2022, and every dollar will help,” Paradise said. “The companies and consultants raising money off this need to cut it out.”

The campaign said it first noticed the problem Saturday when former President Donald Trump’s Save America sent out an email that asked prospective donors to “contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to the Official Georgia Runoff Fundraising Goal and increase your impact by 1200%”

But if donors didn’t see a link that said “click here for details or to edit allocation,” they wouldn’t have noticed that 90% of their contributions automatically went to Trump, with the remaining 10% going to Walker.

Hershel Walker is finally realizing he's being used by the Republican party as "My Black friend", with recent fundraising efforts focused around his race were only providing his campaign with $.10 for ever $1 raised.

After the 90:10 ratio was highlighted on Twitter, Trump’s committee changed the allocation to a 50:50 split.

Paradise credited Trump’s team for making the quick change, saying it “is extremely helpful and it’s what we request others do.”

The problem for the Walker campaign, however, is that the emails from different political committees — one for the North Carolina Republican Party and the campaign committees of newly elected GOP senators J.D. Vance in Ohio and Ted Budd in North Carolina — initially defaulted to 90:10 divisions, as well.

The North Carolina GOP chair, Michael Whatley, said the committee changed its allocation to 50:50 after it was contacted by the Walker campaign Monday.

But the good news is after being told they're basically treating Walker as a sharecropper by using him to fundraise and then taking the overwhelming majority of the funds, that many have moved to more equitable 50:50 splits.

[Gorsameth]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...race-rcna57136



Hershel Walker is finally realizing he's being used by the Republican party as "My Black friend", with recent fundraising efforts focused around his race were only providing his campaign with $.10 for ever $1 raised.



But the good news is after being told they're basically treating Walker as a sharecropper by using him to fundraise and then taking the overwhelming majority of the funds, that many have moved to more equitable 50:50 splits.

in before 2 days from now they change it back to 90:10

[Levelfive]

That's the case currently, but it's too soon to tell if this signals a permanent change for the same reasons that the brief moments of introspection in the wake of Jan 6 proved to be fleeting.

The thing is that regardless of how toxic Trumpism actually is when it comes to general elections, the Trump bloc is by and far the most energized segment of the Republican base and may very well continue to be the deciding factor when it comes to GOP primaries; leading to continued slates of extremist and generally unappealing candidates going into elections where there aren't talking points like inflation or crime to buoy them.

Like I said previously, the point of divergence for the GOP as currently constituted was back in 2012 - rather than jettisoning the Freedom Caucus and trying to embrace a more generally appealing policy platform, they opted for a strategy of subverting democracy by doubling down on lies and malapportionment. But that strategy has an expiration date: regardless of outliers like Florida, Republican gains among minority voters continue to be lackluster and the party is continuing to haemorrhage support among women and young people.

Deals with the devil are not so easily undone, especially not by people who pride themselves on being resistant to change.

Agreed, excellent points. I guess now Republicans will get that 'bloodbath' they've been itching for.

[Elegiac]

I wouldn't object to extra-legal solutions, though. More Punisher, less Batman.

You do realise that the Punisher is a commentary on the nature of retaliatory justice being endlessly cyclical and thus ultimately unproductive, right?

This has some real Gundam "wow, cool robots!" energy.

[Zinstorm]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...race-rcna57136



Hershel Walker is finally realizing he's being used by the Republican party as "My Black friend", with recent fundraising efforts focused around his race were only providing his campaign with $.10 for ever $1 raised.



But the good news is after being told they're basically treating Walker as a sharecropper by using him to fundraise and then taking the overwhelming majority of the funds, that many have moved to more equitable 50:50 splits.

Wow.... If I was Walker I'd be thinking about how he felt about how his own party leaders are treating him.

[Fugus]

Wow.... If I was Walker I'd be thinking about how he felt about how his own party leaders are treating him.

If I had to guess, he would feel like those girls he screwed and then tried to get them abortions as he ditched them only to lie about them in public.

[Grinning Serpent]

You do realise that the Punisher is a commentary on the nature of retaliatory justice being endlessly cyclical and thus ultimately unproductive, right?

This has some real Gundam "wow, cool robots!" energy.

That's probably because I don't follow comics. I just know Batman's the one that lets the bad guys live so he has to keep catching them, and Punisher is the one that shoots the bad guys instead.

[Elegiac]

That's probably because I don't follow comics. I just know Batman's the one that lets the bad guys live so he has to keep catching them, and Punisher is the one that shoots the bad guys instead.

You don't have to follow comics to make the very simple observation that the fact the Punisher keeps finding new bad guys to fight despite shooting them indicates his methods aren't any better at stopping crime.

[VMSmith]

You don't have to follow comics to make the very simple observation that the fact the Punisher keeps finding new bad guys to fight despite shooting them indicates his methods aren't any better at stopping crime.

Yep, because for pretty much everyone "I wanna be a bad guy and do some crime!" is not a motivation. There are fundamental issues underlying crime that simply locking people up or executing them will not solve. People are driven to crime, and very few choose it because they think going to prison will be fun.

[Elegiac]

Yep, because for pretty much everyone "I wanna be a bad guy and do some crime!" is not a motivation. There are fundamental issues underlying crime that simply locking people up or executing them will not solve. People are driven to crime, and very few choose it because they think going to prison will be fun.

The sexual tension between making self-defeating metaphors from comic books you don't read and espousing counterproductive political positions based on a superficial understanding of the subject matter. Rofl.

[The Stormbringer]

So is the counting done for everywhere else yet, or are we still waiting to find out stuff beyond the run-off?

[Grinning Serpent]

You don't have to follow comics to make the very simple observation that the fact the Punisher keeps finding new bad guys to fight despite shooting them indicates his methods aren't any better at stopping crime.

It's not about stopping crime, though. It's about ensuring that they don't escape punishment for their crimes.

You stop crime (or, rather, reduce it since you can't truly *stop* crime) by implementing policies based on accumulated data that address the root causes for those crimes. People will stop mugging each other or knocking over liquor stores if they are able to find gainful, lucrative employment for example.

But when the lawmakers are the ones violating the laws, it's another problem. "We investigated ourselves, and determined that we are free of wrongdoing," basically. For those, I don't particularly mind some extra-legal actions if it's necessary to bring them to justice.

I also see it as a form of cutting through the bullshit. We all know that Trump is guilty of many, many crimes, for example. The evidence against him is utterly undeniable. So why the *fuck* are we wasting so much time?