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Why did Democrats lose Latinos? Jack Herrera explores this.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … s-00188769
If Republicans continue their gains with Latinos at the same stunning rate, it will be enough to keep Democrats out of power for generations. And yet, Democrats might not be in as much danger as it appears. There’s evidence that this year’s vote does not represent a pure, wholesale ideological transformation of Latinos. I met voters who thought of the election simply as a referendum on the economy.

The school teachers and gardeners and ranchers didn’t talk like Steven Bannon or J.D. Vance. They talked about the price of milk and gas. More than that, they saw national Democrats as apathetic — the party didn’t see their path to victory going through many Latino neighborhoods, so they focused elsewhere. And the results reflected that.

The morning after the election, I got lunch with Chuck Rocha, a Democratic campaign strategist who came to fame after he helped Sanders perform shockingly well with Latinos in South Texas and elsewhere.

Rocha never went to college, and his introduction to politics was working in the plant’s union, alongside the men in his family. That eventually led him to the Democratic Party, which Rocha joined in 1990, hoping to, as he recently put it, “fight NAFTA, drain the swamp of over-educated rich people in power, stop investing my money in foreign wars and prioritize making things in America again.”

Over our table, Rocha raised his eyebrows and asked me, “Who does that sound like today?”

The hard truth for Democrats is that their problems with Latinos, and their problems with all working class voters, go beyond Trump — these are people who feel they’ve been materially failed by Democrats for a generation.

More on how the Republican chokehold on social media influenced the election:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … s-00188548

It would certainly explain why voters supported progressive ballot measures but then voted for a fascist candidate.

It's interesting. Rosenbaum's version of Lex Luthor was pretty unusual among Lex Luthors.

I've never seen the SUPERBOY series. But across Gene Hackman, John Shea, Clancy Brown, Jesse Eisenberg, Michael Rosenbaum, and that other one, the main elements of Luthor is that he is an egocentric, self-serving con artist dedicated to amassing wealth and power, who guises his confidence game in different guises.

Hackman guised his con (destroying populated areas to create real estate) in flair and costumes and not much else. He was a huckster version of Luthor.

John Shea guised his con (sabotaging federal and municipal projects so Lexcorp could 'rescue' them at a price) in an extravagant arrogance and a facade of fair play that masked a petty, bitter, vindictive, and eventually deranged personality. After Clark and the Daily Planet destroy the Luthor empire at the end of LOIS AND CLARK's first season, Luthor is reduced to a homeless madman living in a sewer with his only ambition being to marry Lois Lane even if he has to brainwash her into walking down the aisle.

Clancy Brown guised his con (technology that would defend the human race made while destroying any competition) in philanthropic futurism, a mask for how the only future Luthor cared about was his own dominance and superiority and mastery of all other life.

Jon Cryer guised his con (exploiting human racism against aliens) with a fake redemption story and extravagant charisma that eventually gives way to his only priority being his ego and his grudges.

Jesse Eisenberg guised his con (calling aliens out as threats for other heroes to destroy) in a guise of geeky, chatty analysis and humanism, but when he murders his own assistant to maneuver Batman to fight Superman, it's clear that he simply enjoys seeing people fight each other on his behalf.

Then we have Michael Rosenbaum, who noticeably played Lex instead of Luthor. Lex's character is defined for me across several scenes over the series. The first is in "Cool", where Lex tells Martha he's hosting a gathering of local farmers at the Luthor mansion to discuss investing in them. Martha and Jonathan attend and find: no other farmers are present. Lex invited only them. Lex expresses his wish to invest in the failing Kent farm so they can buy advanced farming equipment, vastly increase their harvests, for which Lex would take a profit.

Jonathan protests, saying the Kent farm is a family business that never took outside help. Lex hands Jonathan a file revealing that Hiram Kent, father to Jonathan, accepted numerous government subsidies in lean years. "Why are you so interested in our family, Lex?!" Jonathan sputters, incensed at this intrusion.

"Your son brought me back from the dead," Lex answers, sincere in his gratitude for how Clark saved Lex from a car accident and performed CPR when Lex had stopped breathing.

Lex is sincere... but note how his approach is intrusive and domineering. He lures the Kents to his home under false pretenses. He deliberately creates a situation where he has more information on them than they do on him. He establishes a position of superiority where, despite claiming he would only be an investor, his dominance is absolute. Lex is taken aback when Jonathan turns him down.

Lex doesn't know how to create a relationship of equality and trust with the Kents. He doesn't realize that, to be a friend, he should simply be present and available, rather than trying to control and maneuver them. It never occurs to him to write up his offer, send the Kents a polite letter, assure them the offer is always open, and to simply be a good buddy. He has to be in charge. But Lex can't and won't see it, and his guise of empowering investment is in fact a con -- for himself. Lex has convinced himself that he is a servant of the world when the truth is, it's simply a facade over his actual goals.

In "Lexmas", Lex declares his worldview: "What I want more than anything is to live happily ever after. And do you know what the secret to happiness is? Power. Money and power. Once you have those two things, you can secure everything else." This culminates in Lex hiring a hypnotist to engineer a breakup between Clark and Lana, followed by Lex dating Lana and engineering her alienation from all her friends, then having her injected with drugs that make her experience all the symptoms of pregnancy to induce her to marry him. Lex needs everyone in his life to be totally dependent upon him and give up all their secrets to him.

In "Descent", after killing Lionel Luthor, there is an angry confrontation between Clark and Lex. Clark accuses Lex of only caring about power and control. "This is Smallville!" Lex sputters. "Meteor freaks! Alien ships! Cryptic symbols! Someone has to protect the world!" Lex further accuses Clark, not incorrectly, of causing Jonathan Kent's death. "Why did Jonathan Kent always look so tired?" Lex says cruelly. "Was raising the perfect son really that much work?"

This is a conflation where Lex has woven lies and truth to present a self-flattering image of himself as the wronged party.  But the truth is, Lex has experimented on meteor mutants to create weapons for sale and power to enrich himself. He doesn't care about protecting the world. And Lex knows that Jonathan loved Clark wholeheartedly whereas Lionel always held Lex at a distance.

We come to the endpoint of Lex's denial: he takes control of the Fortress in the Arctic and confronts Clark, declaring, "You didn't trust me with everything you had!" Lex activates a Kryptonian Orb that he believes will grant him control over Clark -- instead, it causes the Fortress to collapse with Lex inside. When we next see Lex: his body was crushed and frostbitten so badly that his face has been seared away; he's immobile in a chair; he's dependent upon cardiopulmonary bypass and a ventilator just to survive; he's using a voice synthesizer just to speak. The charisma of Michael Rosenbaum has been sheared off by ice and hate.

Lex confronts Clark and Lana and declares, "Clark Kent and Lana Lang. You've destroyed me in every possible way." Except -- it was Lex who triggered the collapse of the Fortress when Clark begged him not to and Lana wasn't even there.

Lex's self-deception is how he guises his con; he has conned himself into thinking he is the world's saviour and it's only other people who steered him to a dark path.

So, Michael Cudlitz? He's Luthor with Clancy Brown's dominating approach, with a measure of Rosenbaum's self-righteous self-deception and the attitude that nothing is ever his fault, and any fault he assigns to others must be punished. But there are none of the charismatic layers that the Cryer and Rosenbaum brought to the role, only the underlying brutality which has become the text rather the subtext.

But to be fair, this is who Lex Luthor is once you strip away the veneer of charm and intelligence. Lex is a thug.

Al Jazeera: There have been no credible allegations of election fraud or evidence of votes that disappeared during the 2024 election.

On November 6, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said that election officials are still counting votes and reported no incidents of compromised election security.

Similarly, Ishan Mehta, director of media and democracy at Common Cause, a public advocacy group, said the 2024 election was safe, secure and “pretty smooth”.

“There is no evidence that any votes disappeared,” or of other fraudulent activity during the 2024 election, Mehta said. He also said he knew of no evidence of attempts — let alone successful efforts — to “hack” or “steal” the election.

Even if such attempts occurred, they would fail, experts said.

“There is no one ‘hack’ to change the outcome of an election or to change vote totals,” Mehta said. “Each state has its own independent, non-connected systems,” and election workers are trained to run elections and fix any issues that arise and take that responsibility seriously.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/ … -disappear

I don't believe any of this. Part of it: this isn't someone with evidence; it's just someone on social media looking at a displeasing result and making broad claims and assumptions without any actual proof.

Reviewing the actual plausibility of their ideas: It's technically possible to insert code into voting machines across numerous counties; it's technically possible to shift votes by 8 to 11 percent; it's technically possible to use bomb threats to interfere with recounts. But how plausible or likely is it?

Given that election systems go through extensive testing and source code reviews and certification processes with secondary paper trails, it is unlikely that this kind of malicious code could go undetected before deployment or during and after an election. A vote shift of 8 to 11 percent would be significant enough to be detectable through basic statistic results and create numerical anomalies that would cause it to be flagged. The idea that bomb threats would interfere with recounts is... incoherently convoluted. A bomb threat would bring increased scrutiny, not less.

This person furthermore claims that these hacks are "simple, stupid, easy", and that is nonsense. Such a hack is complex, demanding, and extremely challenging. Their past examples -- hacking point of sale systems -- is completely different from hacking voting machines. Point of sale systems use standard hardware and software like Windows and Linux with networked platforms and very common exploit points. Election machines use proprietary and specialized software with limited networks and often standalone operation with totally different exploits.

This hacker's claim that credit card machines are comparable to voting machines is false and absurd.

I can't claim for a fact there was no fraud. But this hacker claims that such a hack would be "simple, stupid" and "easy" and it wouldn't. They have completely generalized one area of expertise (consumer security) to an entirely different field (elections).

I guess it's fine to share these things because we should discuss them, but random people on social media offering theories as fact is not in any way factual. And certainly, anyone with a theory like this should send it off to be checked, if only to be reviewed, if only to see if there's actual evidence of it that could allow the election to be contested.

**

I don't mean to insult anyone, but theories aren't facts. Just because something is potentially true doesn't mean it is.

A theory I might offer: people sometimes gravitate to easy answers (hacking and conspiracy theory) over a more complex answer that forces them to re-examine their preconceptions and assumptions about human behaviour, that demands a more critical view of people they may have idolize, that calls for a deeper and often darker exploration of why humans might vote for progressive measures but conservative candidates.

Take your time and be easy on yourself. This is an impossible situation that no Democrat ever thought they'd be staring down the barrel of once, let alone twice.

As QuinnSlidr is our friend, I took the view that he was not lying, but speaking out of grief.

As pilight is also our friend, I take the view that he is expressing a personal perspective but has left out key nuances, or is simply mistaken, as opposed to willfully conveying what is otherwise an incredible falsehood.

I felt lots of things in my bones... that sometimes were not true. I felt SLIDERS would be back on the air by 2005; that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016; that Donald Trump would be in jail by 2021, etc..

The world doesn't always reflect what I feel. My emotions are often valid, but my prognostications are often wrong. They were wrong here. On November 5, I watched every analyst I've been following express optimism; as the night went on, they began saying there were still slim chances; by morning, they were apologizing for having gotten it so very, very wrong.

**

A certain analyst whom I'm reluctant to name or link to anymore explained his incorrect optimism: he'd seen Harris advancing in the last week of polling and ahead in early votes, he'd seen a race that was close and competitive, and he thought Harris' ground game and financial advantages would tip the scales in her favour. Unfortunately, Trump’s Election Day surge overwhelmed all advantages, reflecting a global removal of incumbent powers during a time of economic crisis. Democrats prevailed better than most world governments seeking re-election, but not enough to win.

**

The New Republic had an article on Republican media vs. non-partisan media. Republicans have effectively taken over the information space: social media, Republican news networks and television. In contrast, non-partisan, fact-oriented media and analysis has been boxed out and downsized to the point where non-partisan news has become niche and the average voter is inundated with Republican propaganda which to America at large is no longer Republican news -- it's just news.

https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/tru … dscape-fox

The only way out: Democrats need to run campaigns that demand media coverage, or they will continue to perform badly in elections. They need to facilitate the creation of a left of center media system that can compete with FOX and Twitter. This won't be easy and it won't be cheap.

pilight never tells me what I want to hear.

But I bow to reality. I accept that Donald Trump won the presidency again. I accept that the resistance begins again.

https://apnews.com/article/california-d … 94ed50a272

I have no idea what you're supposed to do with your worldview, all this reads like someone having trouble with the real world failing to match the one presented in Democratic bubbles of polling and campaigning. This loss is going to be extremely destructive and probably the end of America's standing on the global stage; it's going to devastate the environment and work on climate change... but it's still not evidence of voter fraud. It's evidence of stupidity, but not conspiracy.

There is no value to a conspiracy theory where Trump somehow rigged the election with no presidential powers and left not a single trace of evidence that would allow Biden and Harris to contest the election. Denying that Democrats lost this election won't help them win the next one. Note that Trump was urgently making false accusations of voter fraud on Election Day... until he won.

If there were evidence of voter fraud, Biden and Harris would call for a recount, contest the election, and investigate it fully, and exhaust every avenue to keep Trump from fraudulently regaining power. They have not done this; there is clearly no avenue for it. These posts strike me as someone going through denial, anger, bargaining and depression.

I think this is where the Democratic Party failed and where they must correct if they plan on winning an election ever again. Their cause has to be to help people get food on the table. It is really that simple.

Ron Filipkowski from Meidas+ has some interesting post-November 5 thoughts on what wrong wrong and how to fix it.

His theory incorporates pretty much all of the above: Biden's late dropout, inflation, too short a season for Kamala to make her mark, the Afghan withdrawal, the border, Merrick Garland, cultural policing issues, Twitter, how Democrats failed to make a case for the Latino vote and the votes of non-college graduates and the working class (not the middle class)... and he notes that the Democratic Party has the talent to change that...

But only if they acknowledge and confront some hard truths and painful failures and stop living in the past.

https://www.meidasplus.com/p/what-went- … irect=true

The autopsy on Democrats' 2024 ambitions continues with an exploration from New York Democrats: why did the Latino vote dessert Democrats?

(It would be awesome if we could discuss why Democrats failed -- which they did -- as opposed to claiming they shouldn't have failed just because. Because when we confront failure, we build to success.)

If there had been a primary and Kamala lost the primary, that would simply have been the will of the Democratic voters, and not any regime throwing her aside.

During the inflation crisis -- and for most of his presidency -- Biden avoided interviews, avoided being available for constituents to ask him questions and avoided anything and everything that would have made him feel present to the people. It's pretty obvious why: his verbal communication skills had declined, he mixed up names, he mumbled, he'd freeze -- and his handlers didn't want his diminishment (superficial as it was) to be visible. They distanced him from the press... and though he could campaign for office that way.

**

Bernie Sanders says that once again, Democrats have given up on trying to win votes from working class people, instead focusing on demographics and identities.

https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1854 … 41698?mx=2

There's definitely something there: Democrats are belittling Trump voters for choosing Trump, mocking them for caring more about the price of eggs than democracy. While voting for Trump is contemptible, the average person has been roiled by inflation, by rising food and housing costs -- and a Democratic Party that brags about having a strong economy to people who are struggling to eat is in serious trouble.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez notes that the Democratic Party is often unable to articulate specific ways to pursue working class votes because the party is unwilling to directly confront the price gouging, exploitation and misuse that corporations and billionaires inflict on the working class because party as it exists depends on so corporations and billionaires to fund it, and while Trump isn't going to change that, Trump offers forceful solutions, even they are facile or false and involve blaming minorities, while Democrats make broad and vague gestures to avoid offending their backers. The upshot is that the working class votes for the party that lies to them over the party that doesn't speak to them.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DCDRaRoxJYW/?hl=en

Vox notes that incumbent governments are being thrown out by voters struggling with the costs of food, health care and housing, pointing out: in 2020, voters were suffering from COVID and blamed the incumbent, who was Trump. In 2024, voters were suffering from inflation and blamed the incumbent, who was Biden and by extension, Trump.

https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/3832 … incumbents

Temporal Flux remarked in 2016 that a lot of people who voted for Trump didn't like or support him, but they were suffering, Democrats didn't seem to be speaking to them beyond token gestures, and that from his observation, the vote for Trump was a way to attack the entire political system that ignored them. I would offer the adjacent theory that it might be a panic button vote from people who were suffering from job losses and costs that wouldn't improve with either administration.

Andrew Yang says Democrats have failed to focus on standard of living, the working class, and alienated the majority of their base; he notes that Democrats had best abandon policing cultural behaviors. Faiz Shakir says Democrats must recruit working-class candidates who reflect people who live payday to payday.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ … w-00187993

I suspect that if Democrats plan on winning any future elections, their proposals need to speak to people who work for a living or the other side will take those voters again.

Brian, take some time to grieve. But don't let your ideals dismiss reality.

The reality I am forced to face: the people I counted on for analysis and assessment and strategy do not have what it takes to bring about a Democrat victory in today's political climate or even analyze an election correctly, and any rejoinders and protests to the contrary about qualifications and disdain for the opposing side and the electoral college are not accompanied with results. Which means you and I were ultimately presenting a losing hand.

As my archnemesis once said, you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them.

It seems to me we'd better listen long and hard to the Grizzlors and pilights of the world and better understand what it takes to win, because what we've got is not working for us.

Thank you, Grizzlor and pilight.

Vote counts are gradual. None of these non-results mean anything right now. Don't mistake mirages for results.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-e … rcna175475

(He said fearfully.)

I think your account is an example of how you treat someone with welcome and consideration on a personal level but are completely opposed to them on a political level.

I do not think we will be getting results until Thursday or Friday. But if I am wrong, I owe you a trip to the Alamo Drafthouse.

The reality is that people can have one set of values on a personal and individual basis and a completely different set of values at the ballot box. An essay I wrote awhile back about someone:

Many years ago, I interviewed an actor who was on a show I liked. This actor would, a few years after our interview, post a lot of Trump-supportive content on his social media. Following Charlottesville with neo-Nazis marching, this actor made a number of posts sharing (false) claims that the Nazi-presence and rhetoric had been overblown or misrepresented. This made me very angry.

I said nothing (well, outside of private conversations, I said nothing). I didn't comment on it in the fan community. I ceased contact and would check in on this actor from time to time, if only as a study of how someone could be radicalized.

This actor eventually scrubbed his social media of all pro-Trump material while leaving behind a few pre-2015, Trump-mocking comments regarding Trump's business practices. Because this actor took down his Trump-support and ceased voicing any support of Trump at all, I'm not willing to name him in this post.

I should note: I don't believe that anyone had to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020 to make the minimum grade as a decent human being. People I respect voted third party or wrote in names because they didn't support Clinton, or because they believed in term limits when it came to Biden, or for other reasons entirely.

However, I believe that the act of voting for Donald Trump was and is evil.

I felt tremendous confusion when this actor expressed support for Trump's 2016 campaign of obvious racism, bigotry, white supremacy and white privilege. This actor had been so generous to me: a lengthy phone conversation, reviewing his quotes and offering clarifications and corrections, patient explanations of his process and work, indulgently sharing memories of times that were challenging and difficult.

He did all this for me, and I am a person of colour. I am an Asian man and I have a Muslim name (which is incredibly weird because my family has no Muslims and is Buddhist on one side and Mennonite on the other). Someone supporting a racist political party that encourages violence against anyone who isn't Caucasian -- that's not something I can ignore morally or in terms of personal safety.

Why did a Trump supporter do so much for an Asian man with a Muslim name? I had conversations with others and received a number of theories.

This twisted me inside for a long time. Eventually, I simply had to bar it from my mind. But in recent days, I've had to think about it, and I've revisited the theories that my friends and family offered me. I have then rejected these theories. I know in my heart (if not for a fact) that they are all wrong.

I have decided that he was sincerely nice to me, a person of colour, in a genuine and heartfelt way and he voted for and supported a white supremacist bigot. Both are true.

Why did he vote for Donald Trump and minimize the presence of Nazis the way Informant, a former poster here, was constantly lying and claiming there where no neo-Nazis even when they were roaring, "You will not replace us"?

A vote for Trump could be, as Grizzlor put it, tribalism, but neo-Nazi denialism goes beyond that.

I'm prepared to suggest that this actor, like Kelsey Grammer, suffered something in his life that shook him and damaged him and his sense of right and wrong when it came to the specific sphere of politics. There are actually numerous areas in his life where he may have experienced something disturbing and traumatic for which he deserves, like any person, sympathy and understanding.

Without going into detail, there was a very early setback in his education that deprived him of credentials he needed in the field of acting (don't bother trying to look this up, you won't find it). This may have caused a sense of failure and may have made it harder than it should have been to build his career, although he did build it. There may have been distress with the mother of his children not being in his life or his children's lives. I don't know that these were life-altering traumas for him. They may have been merely setbacks, but they probably weren't non-serious issues.

And then there was this actor's biggest job. The pinnacle of his career. He'd acted in small roles and acted in medium-sized roles and acting had become his full time job. Then came a role that would bring him to his largest audience yet. This role, while potentially career-defining, also came with a sense of humiliation: the actor was hired to effectively replace and imitate a different performer.

The original performer in this role was a big name who had played the character for years, but suddenly left the role. This actor I interviewed was the successor and his new job involved mimicking the original performer's performance. (I guess this gives it away)

This job must have come with the constant sense of being second-chosen, second-best, least-wanted, least-remembered, least-respected. There was the sense that the highest amount of regard for his career was when he performed in the shadow of someone else, copying someone else's work rather than offering something uniquely his own. This is an extremely caustic and mocking interpretation, and it is absolutely not how I see this person or his life or his work.

I consider this actor to a more skillful, detailed, thoughtful and talented than his predecessor, and truly a master thespian. I was impressed by how the actor's work was not imitation, but tribute where mimicry of the previous performer was just one facet of a very complex performance. And this actor could have built a successful career beyond this big role. He had the talent and physical appeal to do so, but he decided to end his acting career a short time after this job due to the need to spend more time with his family.

He left acting and found success in a different field. As a result, his former acting career was then defined by this one part where people saw him as a stand-in for somebody else; a scab, a stand-in, a substitute.

I have never and will never see him as a substitute for anybody. But it is how many others viewed him and viewed his life and viewed his work. That had to have affected him, especially when he was told by cruel fans in public that his failure to live up to his predecessor was why the show was cancelled.

These are not easy experiences.

As Dr. Frasier Crane might say: someone who experiences a sense of disenfranchisement, abandonment -- and who is treated as a shabby substitute -- could experience dire feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, weakness, and frustration that he is viewed as a second-rate copy rather than someone with his own set of experiences and skills and approach to his profession and craft.

Someone might go through this and then in their politics feel a desire for control, dominance, privilege, elevation, superiority, vindication and obedience, and this might be reflected in their voting for and supporting fascist authoritarianism and entitlement.

Someone could experience all these things and cast that vote... but still retain the ability to dismiss race and ethnicity on a personal level (like when interacting with a fan) while making racist and white supremacist choices on a political level.

One does not negate the other. Being kind to me does not erase the fact that this person cast a ballot for racism, fascism and authoritarianism. At the same time, casting that ballot did not erase the fact that this person was extremely generous to me on a personal and psychological level and, in their kindness to me, was also being kind to every other fan of his work.

This person has ceased supporting Donald Trump publicly. This means that their politics today are now a private affair as they are no longer voicing any opinion of it at all and have removed their previous opinions from their platform. For this reason, I will not name this actor nor will I associate this person with the cause from which he severed his public (if not private) allegiance. I have said nothing about this online for the past seven years because I did not want to diminish this person's standing or what he had shared with fans.

As someone who has voted for different parties at different times, I can say that there are votes for parties that I regret casting. I have made votes that, upon reflection, I consider to have been acts of evil on my part. I wouldn't want to be defined by a vote that I now regret, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

These are important subjects to discuss, and I don't feel silence serves anyone. However, I make the request that if we talk about this more, we avoid using this person's name as search engine optimization can cause associations that this person clearly no longer wants to maintain... and as this person never committed any actual crimes (none that I'm aware of, anyway), he has the right to change, to chart a new course, and to move on.

**

There are dark days ahead of you. You're all going going to be tested. And I'm so sorry for how hard it will all be.

But... I have faith in you.

I am super-behind and need to watch ECHO before I get to AGATHA. And I am currently knee-deep in a SMALLVILLE rewatch. But I'll get to it!

I hope he's right.

Hey, I need to ask Slider_Quinn21 something. Given how controversial Henry Cavill was as Superman -- how did SQ21 feel when Clark killed Titan in Season 6, Episode 17, "Combat"?

Also, I've been rewatching the show, and while Seasons 2 and 4 are as bad as I recall, Season 1 is strong and Seasons 3 is very good, and Seasons 5 and 6 I would go so far as to call great. I am not at Season 7 yet, but I recall it being terrible.

I'm scared, Greg.

I haven't lost hope... but sometimes, hope just fills me with fear because I know how much it will hurt if that hope is proven false.

And my spare room is currently filled with my mother's dialysis supplies and I cannot find the air mattress, so I am not sure I can offer Rob and his wife and kids a place to stay if he moves to Canada.

But it doesn't matter. My fear and hope won't change anything. There's only one thing that ever makes a difference.

Back to work.

Which threads do you want renamed to what?

I think Brad Schwartz is saving face with an untruth. The reality, from what I can tell, is that James Gunn could have wholeheartedly and totally supported more seasons of SUPERMAN AND LOIS and the CW would have still been reluctant to pay for it with their new budget reductions. When the CW can't even keep THE WINCHESTERS and WALKER: TEXAS RANGER going, it's going to struggle with SUPERMAN AND LOIS.

I'm also doubtful that James Gunn would have even been able to stop SUPERMAN AND LOIS if the CW were inclined to order another season. Gunn may certainly be in charge of in-house WB film and TV projects, but a CW Superman show comes from the CW network purchasing the licensing rights to Superman for a period of time with options to extend, and I can't imagine the CW not locking in those extensions even if they may waive them.

It seems to me like the situation is another part of the budget reduction where some of the former cast can only be in three episodes because it's what production can afford to pay. Interestingly, on social media, this actor said that he wasn't going to be in the fourth season at all, only to later be seen in on-set photos.

Someone previously posted when Trump got shot that the election was "over" and I thought that was nonsensical. So, when someone says Kamala will win and the election is over... I mean, that strikes me as magical thinking, not reality.

I think Kamala going on FOX and Rogan demonstrates the willingness to reach beyond diehards and to reluctant voters.