Sliders.tv → Posts by Slider_Quinn21
Just my two cents here, but I would like to find a solution that doesn't involve dwindling our already-small community by another person. I truly respect ireactions' desire to keep this moderated and respectful and not allow toxic behavior. I also understand QuinnSlidr's fear and anger.
I would prefer if both of you took a step back and tried to read each other's posts from a different angle so we don't lose anyone (voluntarily or involuntarily).
Democrats are terrible...TERRIBLE...at social media.
I hate to say it, but I think Democrats are just terrible at politics. I think they trust systems too much, and I think they care too much about doing things the right way. I think they're afraid to play dirty or do what it takes to win. And I think that's why they don't win.
Republicans decided in the early 90s to win at any cost. They had a long-term strategy to overturn Roe. They had a plan and they executed it. They came off as evil and corporate and uncompromising and unsympathetic, but it didn't matter electorally.
Democrats were too slow to go after Trump for his crimes. They were too slow to swap out Biden. They were too trusting that people just wouldn't vote for Trump because of who he is.
They have the right message and the right people and they're on the right side of history, but they need to take a page out of Republican playbooks and get the win no matter what. Because if you do things the right way and lose, this is where we end up.
I think the fact that Democrats lost across the board shows that Kamala wasn't the issue. Which is both good and bad. They can't really blame the presidential campaign, but it also shows that the issues they have go beyond one politician. People just weren't buying what Democrats were selling.
Maybe time will fix that. Maybe it won't. Luckily for Democrats, I don't have to make any key decisions.
Democrats are on the right side of history. But their strategy is on the losing side of history. Their 2024 loss is a matter of public record. I shouldn't be derided overtly or subtly for stating that Democrats lost in 2024 which is a highly observable and entirely factual observation. Defeat is a part of life.
Agreed. What's frustrating is that Republicans denied they lost and went with the same strategy as 2020 and won big. Election denialism and racism and revenge and all of that was popular and was an effective electoral strategy. Plus, it was huge that two people in prison got sex changes on taxpayer dollars. If you divide the cost by every taxpayer, it's gotta be pretty close to a cent per person that taxpayers paid. Enormous.
So I don't really know what to say to that. It wasn't Kamala being a bad candidate because Democrats lost across the board. I still think it's a coalition problem and the coalition needs to change. Swapping out blue collar workers for upper middle class workers was a bad trade for Democrats.
I also don't know what they can do to fix it. Biden and Democrats were very pro-union, and the union workers voted overwhelmingly for Trump. If Democrats give union workers what they want (and Trump talks about firing striking workers openly), I don't see what Democrats can do to win them back. They don't listen, they don't pay attention, and they don't seem to care.
That's why I'm going to wait to see whether or not those people are annihilated by Trump's policies. If they are, I think the Democrats' work becomes very easy. If they aren't, I don't think Democrats have much of a shot whether Trump allows elections or not.
I think everyone should calm down. I think several things are at play here.
1. People are angry. I'm angry. This sucks. It's allowed to suck, and we're allowed to be angry. What really sucks is that the bad part hasn't even started yet.
2. Trump won. As weird as that might feel or as bad as that might be, it's what happened. Maybe Trump did something, but if he did, he covered his tracks. If he did, he got away with it. But until we can prove he did it, we need to treat conspiracy theories about Kamala winning the same way we treated conspiracy theories about Trump winning in 2020. They're nonsense. I would love for nothing more than for Trump to be caught in another crime and thrown in prison and Kamala be president. But this isn't Scandal, and there's no indication that anything like that would ever happen. He's going to be president, and now it's our turn to respond.
3. How do Democrats react? I honestly don't know. I think Democrats were in trouble either way, and this just expedites the trouble.
On one hand, I think QuinnSlidr is right in the sense that Democrats are on the right side of history. They stood up for democracy, for the middle class, for justice, for hope, for the future, and for America. I think the Democratic party should still stand for these things, and I don't think Kamala or the Harris campaign should have regrets about the campaign they did.
On the other hand, they lost. And they lost bad. Not just at the presidential level but everywhere. From sea to shining sea, this election was a disaster. If Kamala lost and the Democrats won the House and kept the Senate, you could blame things on Harris or her campaign. Or you could blame racism or sexism. But white male Democrats also lost in places they shouldn't have so it can't be all that.
The problems that the Democrats face are many. One, there's Trump-level concerns. Will we ever get to have elections again? Will Trump stack the deck to make it hard/harder/impossible for Democrats to win? Will Trump go after Democrats with his DoJ and there won't be any Democrats to run in 2026/2028? ireactions says that I shouldn't worry about this stuff, and since his head is probably clearer than mine, I will believe him.
But there's the problem of the Democratic coalition, both what it is and what it needs to be. The coalition in 2020 (and what they tried to do in 2024) was traditional Democrats with suburban/college-educated former Republicans who were repulsed by Trump. The problem is that those two groups don't have a ton in common. Traditional Democrats are in favor of unions and social programs and helping the less fortunate and stuff like that. Suburban college-educated people are cool with all that, but they're more interested in social progressive issues like climate change and LGBT rights Ukraine and democracy and some of the "woke" stuff. One group is worried about tomorrow. The other group is doing well enough that they're worried about 2050.
So when Democrats focus on unions and child tax credits, one part of the base is energized and the other half is indifferent. When Democrats focus on Ukraine and climate change, half the base is energized and the other half is wondering why we're focused on that stuff when groceries are expensive. Republicans don't have that problem - when they scream about whatever woke is, everyone cheers. When they scream about lowering taxes, everyone cheers. They're a monolith.
And I don't have a solution to that. My solution for 2024 was for Kamala to ignore voters like me and let me make the pragmatic choice. If that means downplaying Ukraine or climate change or whatever, that's fine. But I'm also hesitant to just say "forget about climate change" because I would like my kids to live on the Earth. I'm fortunate not to be hit hard by inflation or gas/grocery prices, and I have the luxury of worrying about more than just right now. But my concerns are still concerns, and if Republicans get Democrats to abandon climate policy, then Republicans win even when Democrats win.
So I don't know. They need to focus on kitchen table issues and get back blue collar workers. My expectation is that Trump will screw things up so monumentally that a lot of those people will abandon Trump and vote Democrat in 2026/2028. Basically, Republicans will lose in 2026/2028 for the same reason that Democrats lost in 2024 - extreme inflation, huge increases to prices, high unemployment, etc. And in that case, they can focus on economic issues in the same way that Republicans focused on it in 2024. And then I think their changes can be smaller - obviously a pivot from Trump/democracy and a focus on the middle class and economic recovery.
But what if Trump doesn't destroy the economy. Not only would he not lose the blue collar workers, but Democrats would probably lose some of the suburban upper middle class people who only voted for Biden/Harris because of Trump. If they're successful under Trump, they might vote for Vance and other Republicans. And then the only hope Democrats would have would be to convince Obama/Trump voters to come back now that Trump is gone. Or hope that, as Trump said, evangelicals will never have to vote again.
But honestly, at this point, I struggle to care. It feels like we lost a battle and the war. The Supreme Court is gone. Ukraine will be gone. Palestine will be gone. The bad guys won. Even if the good guys win next time, it might be too late to turn things back around. It feels hopeless, and honestly, maybe it is.
Again, the bad part hasn't even started yet.
Oh I agree, and I think that's where the narrative would've gone. It would've gone from Clark keeping the secret to the family keeping the secret to his expanded family to the town to the whole world.
I think there's some narrative potential in Clark trusting Smallville to keep his secret. I don't know if this idea fully works, but I think you could do a POV episode where paranormal detective analogues (maybe like Sam and Dean, maybe like Mulder and Scully) come into town because they've heard something strange is happening in Smallville. The town seems nice at first as they run into the Kents and some of the other characters on the show. But people are dodgy when certain questions are asked. Nervous. Suspicious. Then weird things happen. Fires mysteriously go out. Cars on a collision course suddenly don't collide. A weird streak appears in the sky. And something happens that causes them to leave town, but those characters are our focus the whole episode. I think it could be fun.
On a political level, it would probably be good for the Democratic Party to figure out how these people get their news and what their politics are because, apparently, we need some of their votes to win.
Oh absolutely. I think it's vital for democracy for the stupid voters to be split evenly. They can believe equally that Democrats are pedophiles that drink children's blood to stay young and that Republicans are careless monsters that would gleefully trade a human life for a buck. We just can't have them all voting one way because a) there are too many of them and b) they are too easily tricked.
I don't know how to get them back. Too many of them are "Democrats bad, Republicans good" and I don't know how you deprogram people like that on a large scale. My only hope is that Trump makes life so miserable for all of them that they have no choice but to realize that they've been lied to. But even then I assume Trump would blame it on "woke" and they'd believe him.
I don't think Superman can keep a secret identity in a small town in this era; once the town knew, it was going to leak and the world would know.
But like I said, no one blabbed it. Not the young woman who's almost certainly active on social media. Not the old lady who could use the money. Not the high school football coach who seems starved for attention. Not the drunk ex-con who wanted an explanation more than money or fame. When Clark appears in costume in the Smallville diner, no one seems to take out their phone and film anything, and no one seems to have released that footage to the public prior to Clark making his announcement.
I agree that it's beyond belief, but it's the reality of the show. No one told anyone the secret outside of town. Obviously expanding that beyond a handful of people puts the secret in jeopardy, but it would be better than telling the whole world. And Clark could easily explain that a) the town owes him this and b) if people found out, their town would be overrun. Which is what episode 8 is about.
I believe Slider_Quinn21 is correct in that they are "stupid voters" in spite of his anger. All they have to do is turn on MSNBC at any time during the election at appropriate times, and they would see Kamala's excellent speeches and detailed comparisons between the candidates. It's accessible, timely, and present. And it's available on lower TV channels, and MSNBC.com, so the argument of affordability and obscurity is nonsense. They just choose to listen to FOX News instead. They simply choose to pander to racist and misogynistic tropes that feed their motivations and ideals, and refuse to do research on the candidates before casting their votes.
I think this is part of it but not even all of it. I don't think people are stupid for not doing full research into everything or watching full speeches or any of that. I would also say that MSNBC is not without bias, and most analyses of the media landscape call this out. They don't lie as much Fox, but they're definitely slanted to the left.
And I don't even know if my problem is necessarily where they get their news. You can watch Fox News and think critically. My issue is more that people don't have any interest in learning anything. I think this election might have gone differently if people had bothered to learn what a tariff is and who pays it. Or understood on any level how the government works. Or what the Vice President is responsible for. What the relationship between the president and the Department of Justice. What the relationship is between the actions of the president and the economy. How the economy works and how slowly it moves. The relationship between the president and Congress and who controls what.
People basically just said "Kamala Harris is Biden" and "I have a good memory of the year 2017 so Trump must be great" and nothing else. No one put any more thought into than that, and that's why we are here. I've seen countless interviews with Trump supporters who have no idea how tariffs work. Which is fine except that it's clear that Trump has no idea how tariffs work. People think that Kamala Harris, as VP, had some sort of control over what Biden does when the VP's roles are extremely limited and extremely specific.
I think these voters are stupid because they don't know and they don't want to know. They fall for dumb little slogans because they want to put absolutely no thought into it. I don't care how they get their news or what their politics are, but I do care that they have a 6th grade understanding of how the country works.
And we are in this situation because we've allowed the dumbest among us to elect the king of the dummies.
I don't know what small town Slider_Quinn21 lives in where the entire populace could keep a secret like Clark Kent being Superman from reaching the rest of the world in this day and age, but I would like to live there.
I completely agree, but within the confines of the show, we were already there, right? The whole town essentially knew. I know the Kents were treating it like it was only a couple people here and there, but even if that's true, those people were keeping the secret. The secret wasn't getting out. Even when Clark revealed himself to everyone in the diner, Clark still had time to arrange a nationally televised interview to announce the secret himself.
That means for an entire day (at least), an entire diner full of people who literally saw Clark Kent turn into Superman (in full costume) didn't blab on social media about it. No one took out their phones and uploaded a video to Instagram. The secret was being kept. So I really don't think it's that much of a leap to say that if Superman stood in front of the town and politely asked them to keep his secret and protect it from others, I have to assume they would.
I agree that it's not super realistic, but it probably wasn't realistic that the girl at the convenience store would keep the secret either. Or even the old lady that Lex tried to buy the farm from. Candice's dad sure as heck wouldn't have kept it.
And we see this kind of thing in sci-fi all the time. A town with a secret, and they all band together to keep it. Whether it's witches or vampires or whatever. From Supernatural to X-Files to Doom Patrol to Hot Fuzz. That's what I'm thinking. A town that's pretty closed off from the rest of the world that would band together to keep a big secret. I don't see how this would be that much crazier than any of that.
Slider_Quinn21 calls Trump voters "stupid voters". I am going to argue that they are "struggling voters": people with limited media exposure, who maybe can't afford to pay for online newspapers, who are seeing all their news via memes and Twitter, who are so tired from working three jobs and taking care of family that they can't seek out non-partisan or left of center media, with Republican-coverage flooding their line of sight. Democrats and left of center media needs to reach these struggling voters.
I'm angry at them so I'm calling them stupid, but you're probably more accurate. But, at the same time, I can't think of a better word than "stupid" right now. Because these people choose to believe a reality that is not like the one they are seeing with their own eyes. They are gaslighting themselves and allowing themselves to be fooled. They believe nonsense about babies being executed and schools performing complicated surgeries even though that's absolutely ridiculous. They believe that gas is $8/gallon when they probably pass ten gas stations a day charging a fraction of that. They believe two prisoners getting sex change operations is a danger to them and their families.
These are people who either can't think critically or refuse to. To me, that's not ignorance. It's stupidity. And I would be angrier at these people except I know they're going to be hurt the worst by what Trump is about to do. So they'll be punished and don't need any additional attack from me.
I finally got to catch up on the latest Superman and Lois episode 7. Wow. What an incredible reveal. Superman obviously had no choice.
I mean did he? I like the reveal from a narrative perspective because I think it opens up some interesting ideas for the last three episodes, but did he really have to reveal it to the whole world? It seems like the secret was out in Smallville, but this wasn't a situation where J. Jonah Jameson revealed Peter Parker's identity to the world. A lot of people in Smallville knew about Clark, but they were keeping the secret. No one rushed out to sell the secret to the Daily Planet or the Inquisitor or anything. No one was really blackmailing him. Even the guy with the gun wasn't looking for money or anything - he just wanted Clark to admit it.
Now maybe it would've exploded and he would've eventually had to do it, but I think a measured response would've been for Clark to reveal the secret to Smallville and trust them to keep it. Then the boys could have a normal life in the town, and Clark wouldn't have to hide. Again, maybe that wouldn't have been enough, but it was enough up until that point. So I think maybe Clark could've taken a smaller step and revealed himself to fewer people and tried things that way.
And maybe if this wasn't the last season, they would've gone in that direction first.
Grizzlor, I was with you for most of that, but I think there are some issues.
What is woke and who is cheerleading it? I never heard Kamala Harris talk about anything that you referred to. I never heard her champion DEI or boys playing girls sports or downplaying Hunter Biden's laptop or critical race theory or any of that. Now Republicans were speaking out against it, but they've essentially made up a word with no definition and are staunchly against it. And it can include tons of things that can change on the day, and it's usually something that is happening so rarely that it's affecting almost no one's actual lives. As I said, two prisoners got sex change operations, and Ted Cruz essentially won his race on that point alone.
So how do you fight that? If I said that Grizzlor has children-eating invisible goblins in his house that he controls with his mind, how would Grizzlor defend himself? He could let people into his home to see that there are no goblins there, but they're invisible and he controls them with his mind. Of course you can't see or hear them, or maybe he hid them in Dimension Z while investigators are there. People don't have to provide proof that any children were eaten because the media covers it up or the investigators are corrupt or whatever. And any expert that Grizzlor brings to proves that invisible goblins don't exist is obviously biased.
Meanwhile, Grizzlor has now spent hours and hours of his time trying to defend himself against something that some idiot made up that is impossible to prove.
Now Democrats could come out against all those things, but herein lies the problem. If you speak out against them, you lose voters on the left. There are people that benefit from DEI, there are people that enjoy doing drag shows, there are trans kids that want to play sports. If they spoke out against everything that conservative media defines as "woke" (which, again, changes regularly and could be anything), they'd essentially be ceding all social progressivism. What if Republicans define gay marriage as woke? Or interracial marriage as woke? Or Brown vs Board of Education as woke? Do Democrats have to come out in favor of segregation because they have to fight woke so that they don't lose elections?
I still maintain that the number one reason Republicans are winning is because they have all the stupid people. Stupid people believe whatever they hear from whoever they like the most. They've convinced themselves that Donald Trump is the smartest man on the planet, and that whatever he says is the truth. They've convinced themselves that kids are getting involuntary sex changes when schools don't even let kids take an aspirin without parental approval. They've convinced themselves that there are millions of invisible child-eating goblins out to get them all over the world.
Stupid people can easily get conned, and that's what happened. They all got conned. When stupid people are evenly distributed in both parties, then this stuff doesn't work. If I say that there are child-eating goblins and Grizzlor says there aren't, then half the people believe me and half believe him.
The good news is that stupid people are going to suffer big time under Trump. They're going to be absolutely wiped out both economically and physically. I think a lot of them are going to believe when they're being told that it's raining (and it's not you know what), but a lot of them are finally going to realize they've been lied to. And if that convinces enough of them to go back to Democrats, then I think we might have something resembling a fair system again.
But if they all continue to believe in Donald Trump no matter how bad their lives are, then Democrats will be battling invisible child-eating goblins forever.
I sincerely hope that you're correct, ireactions. I'm sure, to some level, I'm just being an alarmist, but here's the scenario I'm talking about. And here are all the roadblocks I think Trump can throw in front of any opposition.
Now, first, I want to say that I don't foresee Trump simply saying "I'm king now, no more elections." I think it would be more strategic than that, and he'd use the powers available to him to do it. I think Trump's DOJ (using loyalists) would come out with a report of a major election fraud scheme for either 2026 or 2028. It would have "evidence" of crimes in a number of states (including all battleground states) orchestrated by Democrats. This could be combined with indictments of Trump's political enemies in these states to make it look legitimate. Trump's FBI would also come out with raids and large demonstrations of evidence.
It would be BS, but it would look official. I assume journalists and whistleblowers in the FBI and DOJ would come out and say the report is untrue, but would people believe them?
Trump would announce that, temporarily, elections are suspended until the investigation concludes. I would think either the date would be undetermined, a dummy date would be established, or they would just say all terms are extended until the next major election date (2028 to 2030 or 2026 to 2028). So now there's an "independent" report of massive election fraud that half the country will be inclined to believe. Would Republican senators and congressmen fall for it? My assumption is yes, and even if enough would impeach Trump, I don't know if enough would convict because you'd need almost 50% of Republican senators to vote for that. And, remember, there would be an official report including "evidence" that a lot of Republicans would instantly believe because it plays into the narrative. Conservative media and social media would be parroting the report and the evidence, and Trump would be hailed as a hero who ended election fraud in the country.
There would certainly be unrest in the country, but I think any unrest could be easily subdued by police, the national guard, and the military. I think the standard citizen would be powerless to do anything.
But let's say that people didn't believe it and Trump was impeached and convicted. And let's say that he was indicted for crimes because he doesn't technically have control over elections. His first move in that case would be to claim that he is immune because his actions were official acts. He oversees the DOJ so he can order them to do whatever he wants, whether it's legal or not. He just had the report created and released, and then he just recommended that there be no elections. Then Congress and the states went along with it. He's totally immune.
If a judge says that he's not immune, he appeals to the Supreme Court. Do they believe him?
Now maybe Trump not going to prison for election crimes isn't the worst thing in the world. In this scenario, he isn't president and elections happened. But it took the media being allowed to report on it, whistleblowers being allowed to speak out, enough people in important positions either believing the report to be untrue or believing the report to be irrelevant, enough congressmen to impeach, enough senators to convict, either a Republican attorney general brave enough to indict his own president or a Democrat has to win in 2028 to assign an attorney general to indict, courts have to believe that Trump is committing an unofficial act or the Supreme Court has to believe it, and then a jury would have to convict.
All that would have to happen for Trump to go to jail. And that's really the only risk that Trump faces. It's a fairly remote possibility of jail time as the risk and being king as the reward.
Because I think people would just believe the report, and the lack of elections would simply make people complacent. The resistance would die down and the Republicans in power would stay in power. Democrats would get swept up in the investigation, and loyalist Republicans would replace them. And people wouldn't care because most people don't care about politics anyway.
(Again, I'm probably just being an alarmist, but that scenario doesn't seem far fetched to me)
I was really moved by Clark surrendering to the evitable and not using time travel or a body double and such to undo the latest change to his life... but I wonder what it means, practically, now that everyone has Superman's home address.
I'm sure it will come up, and it will be interesting to see how it's handled. This isn't exactly like Tony Stark giving out his address in Iron Man 3. People aren't going to come after Superman, and if they did, Superman and his super sons can probably handle it. The one who's in real danger is Lois, and I'm not sure how you handle that. But people already know that Lois is under the protection of Superman, and it keeps people away from her instead of inspiring people to go after her.
See, I thought that before. I thought that Republicans would use Trump to get control of the White House and when it became convenient to remove him and install their guy (Pence), they would. Not only did they not do that when they had the chance (the first impeachment), they didn't even do it when it was politically convenient (the second impeachment). I was confident that the Supreme Court, with nothing really owed to Trump anymore (since he can't give them anything they don't already have), would do the right thing and confirm that the president doesn't have full immunity for crimes. Not only did they not, but they gave him everything he wanted.
Republicans stood by Trump despite the fact that he tried to overthrow the government, tried to hoard national secrets for God knows what, and when he was convicted of felony offenses. I don't see any reason they wouldn't follow him down any road. And once Trump crosses the dictator threshold, he also has fear as a weapon to keep people in line. If he executes a political rival or two, his allies are less likely to do anything about it. When he controls law enforcement and the judges, there's not a whole lot he can't do.
Maybe Trump doesn't want any of that. Maybe he just wants to live in the White House and have people call him Mr. President. Maybe getting the DOJ to dismiss the crimes against him was enough. And maybe he doesn't want to "run" again in 2028. Maybe we have built up a version of our heads of Trump that doesn't exist.
But if that version of Trump does exist, I don't think there's any limit to what he would do, and I don't think there's anything he couldn't do. He has enough support in Congress, he has control of the Supreme Court to do whatever he wants, he has control of law enforcement to put down any sort of resistance, and he has control of the military if he needs more control.
Maybe he will be a normal president. But if not, we are all very much at his mercy.
(Just my opinion. Do not let my fear mongering impact your lives.)
I really hope you're right on your second point. But, Trump's father lived to be about 94 so they do have longevity... (I'm trying not to think about that right now)...
It's possible that he has good genes. But remember two things:
1. This is a very overweight man who eats extremely poorly. Even if he and his father ate the same exact foods, the food that Trump eats is going to have more fat, more artificial ingredients, more sugar, more chemicals, etc. Trump also gets almost no exercise from what we can tell. He golfs a lot, but he's not walking the course or carrying his own clubs. And depending on how much work he's actually going to do as president, he's going to get very little sleep and will almost certainly have a high level of stress either way. A human heart can only take so much.
2. Trump doesn't listen to actual advice. So if a normal doctor saw a patient exactly like Trump and recommended additional exercise or a statin for cholesterol or less sodium in his diet, etc, then the patient might listen to the doctor and take steps to improve his health. 1) Trump wouldn't listen 2) The doctor won't tell him any of that. Trump wants to hear that he's in perfect health with no issues and will live forever no matter what he does. So I assume Trump has issues that any man his age would have, and I assume he's not getting any treatment for it. Unless they're secretly slipping it into his food or something. Trump would fire any doctor that said he wasn't in perfect healthy, and Ronny Jackson sure as heck isn't going to tell him anything is wrong.
With those two things in mind, we can't even count on Trump having the best modern medicine in the world. He's an old fat guy who has a yes man as a doctor. He was already on a limited timeframe, and God willing, that time is running out.
I agree. And that's why I'm good with Vance because I don't think he'd do most of that. I don't think he'd suspend elections, I think he'd allow for free and fair elections, and I think he would accept results that he didn't like.
The good news is that Trump is very old and unlikely to be in good health. I think he'll die sooner than later which means we might only have to live a decade at most under a Trump dynasty. If he hands things over to someone like Vance, maybe he would restore democracy. I don't know. But considering what he eats and how he eats while getting zero exercise, I don't think he lives that long.
Yeah, but I think there's three things about Vance vs Trump that don't scare me.
1. No one is beholden to Vance like they are to Trump. Vance is less popular among Republicans than Trump, and I don't think Republicans would worship Vance the way they worship Trump. I think there's a much greater chance that Republicans would push back on Vance in ways that they wouldn't push back on Trump. If Trump put out a national abortion ban, all Republicans would get behind it because they wouldn't want to alienate Trump's cult base. Vance has no cult base, and there's no indication that they would all immediately accept Vance if Trump were to die. Republicans would be free to make the choice that is best for themselves, not necessarily the choice that is best for Trump.
2. I think Vance would take the job seriously in a way that Trump simply won't. He might want to turn the US into Gilead, but I don't think he's willing to break the law or bully people or manipulate situations in order to do it. I think he'd try, but he'd try in a way that normal presidents would try. And if he failed, he'd be upset but he wouldn't burn the whole system down. Remember that Vance thought Trump was Hitler eight years ago. That guy is still in there, and without Trump to impress, he might come back out.
3. Anything Vance does (outside of the Supreme Court) can be undone by a future Democratic president. Even if he guts the federal government per Project 2025, that can be fixed. Any laws he passes can be undone. Even the Supreme Court is fixable by adding members to balance things out. But the point is that we need to have a future Democratic president for that to work. If Trump suspends elections, there's a chance that he appoints his son to succeed him and then America is finished. America would be in bad hands with Vance, but there's a chance it's still America. The boat would be off course, but it wouldn't be destroyed. Trump will aim the ship right at an iceberg, and there would be no saving it.
I'll take off course. It means we still have a ship.
Again. In no way saying Vance is good. He sucks. But Vance is, at least in my humble opinion, a significantly safer option for the future of the country and dangerous in a different (and less permanent) way. Maybe Vance would execute rivals and use the military to attack political opponents and bow down to dictators. But I don't think he would, and that would make me feel so much better with a Vance presidency.
I just hope we don't get President Vance if Trump somehow kicks the bucket while in office. That would be even worse.
See, I disagree. I think Vance would be bad, but I think he'd be bad in reparable ways. If Trump died today and Vance was going to be president for the full four years, I think my stress level would go down a ton. Vance is more dangerous in a Project 2025 way because I think he's way smarter than Trump and more Christian nationalist / far right wing /etc.
Vance would do all the things that Trump would do (replace Alito and Thomas with younger, crazier versions), gut the government to make it work worse, etc, but I don't think he'd do the incredibly dangerous / illegal things that Trump would do.
- I don't think he'd necessarily let Ukraine die or allow Russia to do whatever they want.
- I don't think he'd suspend elections
- I don't think he'd target political rivals
- I don't think he'd be okay with executing people that disagree with him
- I don't think he'd sell out America to make a buck
- I don't think he'd get us out of NATO
- I don't think he'd do the mass deportation (or at least not to the level Trump wants)
- I don't think he'd do the tariffs
- I don't think he'd do outright illegal / thuggish / mobster activities
I think Vance is dangerous, but I don't think he's anywhere near as fascist or anywhere near as anti-American. I think Vance, while twisted, would do what he thinks is best for the country. Trump will only do whatever is best for himself and will sacrifice whatever it takes to get what he wants. I think Trump doesn't care about legacy or the future or any of that. Vance, I think, would want to be a good president, and I think he'd be much more willing to be a "normal" president than Trump will even try.
And with Vance, we'd be able to possibly fix any damage that he does. Not on the Supreme Court, of course, but that's gone either way. Democrats could get control of Congress as early as 2026, and they'd have a great shot of beating Vance in 2028. I think the economic state would be better compared to Trump, and I think there'd be a slight sense of normalcy.
Again, I think he'd be a terrible president. But not a king. Not a tyrant. Not actively trying to destroy America to appease dictators. I think he'd stand up to Putin in a way that Trump wouldn't in a million years. I think he'd actually be "America First" as opposed to what Trump does (which is Trump first). It'd be bad but not apocalyptic, and him being president is currently best case scenario for me.
I don't know if Trump can actually suspend future elections.
It would be illegal, but he has full immunity. What would be the recourse? If he suspended 2026 midterm elections, the Republicans would still control Congress and the Senate would never convict him even if he was impeached. Trump would have some BS argument about some sort of voter fraud scheme the FBI (which he would control) and Department of Justice (which he would control) would have "uncovered." Half the country would believe him. So for the safety of the country, no elections would be held. Or they'd be indefinitely delayed. And half the country would celebrate. Democratic congressmen (and maybe some Republican ones) might complain, but Trump could have them jailed (or executed) and there's nothing anyone could do because he has full immunity. People could riot or protest, and the military (which Trump would control) would massacre them. He has full immunity.
If he wants to do that, there's no one that would stop them. We are literally at his mercy because Congress can't (and won't) stop him and the courts have given him unlimited power to break the law. Maybe Trump doesn't want to do that, but if he does, it doesn't matter if he "can" - he just will.
And that's why I'm not watching or reading any news at all. As I told my friends, I'm unsubscribing to the world until either Trump goes away on his own or dies.
Yeah, I think the conversation is basically at an end. Democrats failed, fairly massively, in 2024. They not only lost, but they lost a ton of ground and the entire government. Trump is going to get to do basically whatever he wants with full control of not only every member of the GOP but all three branches. If he wants to declare that there are no elections in 2026, no one will be there to stand up to him. The country, and possibly the world, is in his hands.
What can Democrats do? I really don't know. You have a situation where people believe whatever Republicans say, however outlandish. Democrats can either spend time, effort, and money trying to prove that clean energy isn't making whales depressed, but it's hard to prove something like that and people won't believe them no matter what they prove. I agree they need to stop focusing on identity politics and focus on issues that help struggling families, but even when they do things that directly help people, Republicans can just lie and say things got worse and people will believe them. People will go fill up their cars for $2.50 a gallon and they'll believe they paid $5.00 a gallon. The stock market can make them rich with record-breaking days, but they'll think their personal finances are a disaster. I don't know how you compete with that.
And that's if we even get elections anymore. It's pointless to worry about Democrats' strategy in 2028 if we don't even know if there will be an election in 2028. It's pointless to speculate about who might run because Trump might throw anyone who could run in jail. It just really sucks, and I hate thinking about it. I've basically put my head in the sand when it comes to the news because it's all depressing.
I think it's important to have a clear differentiation between "something feels wrong" and "something is wrong"
I 100% agree that something feels wrong. The polls, even with GOP trash polls dragging down the average, looked like Harris was going to win. If not any of the Sun Belt, at least the Blue Wall (which was enough). Maybe not by much but there was a consistent result from reliable polls that she was up by at least a point or so in all three Blue Wall states. There was also, for months now, reliable polls showing that she would win the popular vote fairly comfortably.
There was also evidence, mostly from the Selzer poll in Iowa, primary data, and local level polling, that polls were underestimating Democrats. Maybe they were undercounting republican women voting Democratic or overcounting minority men voting Republic, but something was happening.
Then there was all the other stuff. Ground game and money seemed to be in Harris' favor and it was thought that it would influence a close election. And there was the fact that Trump was calling for fraud early, which some saw as an indication that maybe he was getting bad internal polling.
And in Democratic circles, that all added up to what was hoped would be a great night for Democrats. Harris would win, maybe bigger than most thought and maybe with a couple surprises (Iowa or even Texas/Florida), the Dems would easily win the House, and they had a decent chance of keeping the Senate at least at 50/50.
Then there's the fact that Trump is a known cheater who has a tech billionaire working his butt off to get him elected. He's been talking fraud for four months, and we know every accusation he makes is a confession. Maybe he figured out a way to steal it.
The problem:
1. Ground game and money meant nothing.
2. The polls were either mostly right or underestimated Trump again
3. The garbage GOP polls were capturing something
4. The Selzer poll was an extreme outlier
5. Trump made gains with minorities and didn't lose as many women as was feared
6. Democratic circles got it wrong. They were way too optimistic, cherry picked the results that made them feel better, and bought into stuff that wasn't right.
And that appears to be what happened. And as ireactions said, while there is speculation, there is no proof that anything out of the ordinary happened. There's still my last point about Trump being a criminal and a cheater, but if he stole the election, so far, he's done it without leaving any sort of trace. And just like we said in 2020, this kind of operation would have to be huge and would certainly have leaks, and nothing ever came of it. If we go by the feeling that Trump couldn't possibly have won, we're the same as election deniers from 2020. There's no evidence and until there is, we have to trust the system.
So yes it feels wrong. Yes, Trump is both capable (and motivated) to steal an election and possibly has the infrastructure to do so. But police can feel like someone killed their wife all they want, but without evidence, the bad guy walks free. Maybe Trump stole the election. But unless we can prove it or at least start building a case that we could prove it, it doesn't matter. He won. The data says he won. The proof is that he won. So it's our duty to accept that he won.
We don't have to like it. We have to remain vigilant. But as much as it sucks, it is what it is. People didn't show up to vote for her. They did show up to vote for him. It sucks but it's true.
Interesting analysis. I guess, to me, I see Lex as a genius more than anything else. I see genius intellect being Lex's superpower and his flaw being his frustration with that not being enough. I think of it as the smart nerd in high school who is constantly frustrated that the cool jock gets all the friends and all the girls. Being the best at science should trump being the best at football.
With Cudlitz, I see a guy who's pretty smart (creating/controlling Doomsday was effective - taking control of his destiny in jail required smarts) but he's more like a different jock who is mad at the better jock. I feel like Rosenbaum (and Brown) are ten steps ahead of everyone and only lose because they underestimate other people's smarts or one small fatal flaw. I feel like Cudlitz is maybe one step ahead and loses because he hasn't fully thought everything through. I think he's been an effective villain but don't see that villain being Lex Luthor.
Your analysis of Rosenbaum is good though. I always thought of Lex as someone who desperately wanted to be loved, and it just drove him to be kind of crazy. That he realized he could never get the love he wants with brains alone, but he could get money and power pretty easily with brains alone. So he took the path of least resistance and hoped that the money and power would be enough to make up for it. Or at least make up for his shortcomings.
I worry about how this will affect you.
Really don't worry about me. I'm better off than most. My wife and I have good jobs that should be fairly safe no matter what happens to the economy. We will be fine. And that's what's so infuriating is that the people who made the pragmatic decision to vote for Harris are not the ones that will suffer under Trump. It's the people that supported him all along. Red states are some of the ones with the worst education, the most poverty, and the most vulnerable. If things go the way I assume they will, a lot of them are going to be completely wiped out.
Even though their savior is in office.
What will they do then? Blame Democrats still? Blame the two people who got sex changes in prison? Maybe. But I'm hoping they realize that Trump never actually cared about them.
What could Democrats have said to working class voters and Latinos and white women before Trump destroyed the economy and the social safety net?
What can Democrats say after Trump tears it all down?
What can Democrats do to be the party of working class voters instead of the party of Uber executives?
I'm hoping that simply breaking the Trump spell is enough for some people, but Democrats really need to take a hard look at what they want their party to be. The problem is that they're at a fork in the road. They can't be the party of the working class and the suburban educated - what those people want isn't aligned. The reason they ran "anti-Trump" is that their new base was held together by people that hate Trump.
Suburban educated voters like me are fine now so they're worried about climate change and retirement accounts and the future of the country. Blue collar workers don't care about any of that because they need to put food on the table tonight. So which segment do you go for and which do you ignore?
To me, I think they need to go after the blue collar workers with ways to make their lives better, and they need to leave voters like me to make the pragmatic choice. Because I do really think that if Trump makes this country a disaster like he's going to actively try to do, he could wipe out support for the GOP. I think he was on the verge of doing it because the whole party is just about Trump. It's why I don't think for a second that Trump will "run" again in 2028 because they don't have anything else. No one else can replicate what Trump did. No one has come close.
Democrats might be in a good spot to win big in 2026 and 2028 if there are elections to win. The problem is that the Supreme Court just gave Trump unlimited powers and put him in the White House. So if he wants to suspend elections and make himself king, who's going to stop him
Well they're about to find out how much Trump will serve them. Trump won't care because he'll have his immunity and the billions of dollars he's about to get out of the government. But after the promises that he made to people that he a) has no ability to provide and b) has no interest in providing, there should* be a lot of really pissed off people when prices go up, jobs disappear, and Trump takes everything for himself.
Again, the worse it is for Trump voters, the better it is for America. So bring it on.
Two things:
1. QuinnSlidr, I think you're right to be suspicious of the results because, logically, it doesn't make any sense. Republicans can say the economy is bad, but it isn't. Republicans can say that an army of illegal immigrants are coming to rape, murder, and steal, but they aren't. Whenever Trump voters are asked how illegal immigration hurts them personally, they say it doesn't. So even if you discount Trump's crimes and his fascist tendencies, there was no reason to vote for him over Harris. The polls said she'd win (even if it was close), Harris had a much better ground game and more money to get her over the finish line, and there were signs that, if there was polling error, it was going to her. On election night, I was sure she'd win. Maybe not 100% but pretty sure.
But I think I fell into a trap that a lot of Trump voters fell into, and my news became an echo chamber. I didn't want to read or trust any source that said Trump might win, and I read as much as I could that gave me hope that she'd win. Maybe those sources, like many of the ones Trump voters listen to, are biased. And that's on me. So while it feels like the cheater cheated, maybe it just feels like that. Until we see evidence, that's just how it is.
2. Here's how I'm going to resist. I hope Trump voters get everything they want. I hope they get the tariffs and the mass deportations. The economy will suffer, and people that thought Trump would save the economy will get to know first hand how that was going to work out. Trust Trump, elect Trump, go broke. No sympathy from me.
I hope he arrests Gaza protesters that voted for Stein or even Trump. I hope Trump goes after unions and encourages companies to fire employees that try to unionize. Biden took care of the unions, and they gave him the middle finger. This is what they wanted, and they get to live with the consequences. No sympathy from me.
I hope proud Americans who voted for him get to see the constitution that they love so much get tattered just a little. I hope Latino men that voted for Trump get caught up in mass deportations and get kicked out by the man they trusted. I hope black men see white supremacy in power and realize that Trump will sooner turn back to slavery than give them a seat at the table. No sympathy from me.
I hope the people who think Trump is a pacifist get to see genocides continue under a new Axis of evil that the United States is not only complicit in but a part of. That Trump doesn't bring peace through strength, he only brings death. No sympathy from me.
I hope the evangelicals that voted for him see that this man isn't godly. Or Christian. Or any of it. That he's a false prophet at best and the Antichrist at worst. I hope they realize that they did the Devil's bidding and that it will take a lot of soul searching to get where they want to go. No sympathy from me.
Because we need all these people to realize the error of their ways. They need to understand what they did and they need to understand the hurt they caused their friends, their neighbors, and themselves. Because as we just found out, there aren't enough good people. We need some of the bad people to become good.
Do I want Trump to suffer? Do I want his cronies to suffer? Of course. But they already won. Trump won't face justice, and anyone under his protection will be set for life. Palestine is gone. Ukraine is gone. There's no saving those people. But we can save some of the Americans that enabled this, but they're going to have to go through a baptism by fire. And they will. They're expecting gas to be $0.50/gallon and for food and clothing prices to drastically drop. They're expecting there to be zero crime and zero sickness and zero problems. They won't be ready.
But we will. And because we'll be ready, we can weather the storm. And we will. I'm sorry to have to be cold, but this is the point we've come to. If we want to save this country, we need to be ready for things to get much worse. And we need to be ready to endure that. If we can, we'll come out on the other end stronger.
=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.
Agreed. I just think "the network media tried to get Kamala Harris elected" is quite the take.
ABC, NBC, CBS, and all their various affiliates couldn't have been more determined to paint the race the way the Democrats wanted.
This is incredibly false. The media did everything it could to get Trump elected. Whenever they could cover a story about him, they would only talk about the "normal" parts of his speeches. They never covered any of the crazy things that Trump would do or say. When Biden was running, they constantly ran stories about how old Biden was. Once he dropped out, the media never mentioned age again.
All of those networks are owned by billionaires who wanted Trump. So the networks treated Trump like a normal candidate.
We heard about Trump taking away minimum wage and health care last time he was elected, when he had a Republican congress behind him. None of it happened.
"I walked across the highway at 4am, and I didn't get hit by a car. The lesson I have learned is that it's impossible for a human being to be hit by a car."
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.
I guess we'll see. When Republicans are in full power and the economy is destroyed, are people going to believe it when Republican media says everything is going great? Maybe. We are talking about some incredibly brainwashed people. They believed that advanced legal theories are being taught to children. They believe that kids are getting sex changes without parental consent. They believe that babies are being executed, I guess for fun? According to pilight, the biggest issue in America is two people getting sex changes in prison.
So maybe when there are food shortages and no social security, no healthcare, no medicare, massive unemployment, and a historic recession, people will believe that everything is going great. Republicans basically told voters that things were going to get really bad, and they still got voted in. Maybe they want to suffer.
That's unlikely. We haven't had a president or ex-president die before they turned 90 in decades. We haven't had one die in office in 60+ years. We haven't had one die in office without getting assassinated in more than 80.
We also haven't had a president who only eats hamburgers, gets no exercise, and is morbidly obese in decades. And with all the civil unrest we're about to have when there's no food, no gasoline, and no jobs, I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't a few more attempts on his life. He's already hated by half the country, and as soon as he starts destroying the lives of the people that trust him, they're going to come for him.
Not the Republican perception, but the public perception. Very few people give a damn about those issues in the affirmative, most people don't care. They really don't care when they're struggling to put food on the table. Harris didn't really campaign on that, but Trump campaigned against it and had plenty of past footage of Harris to work with, not to mention clips from The Breakfast Club with Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy sharply disagreeing with Harris.
Harris let Trump stick her the fringe issue box. The tag line "Kamala is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you" was brutally effective.
Well, two things.
1. Trump isn't for them, which they'll quickly find out. The educated people who voted for Harris have good jobs that will allow them to get through the economic hurricane we're about to get hit with. The uneducated people who voted for Trump are living paycheck to paycheck and are going to be wiped out. And they're the ones that are going to depend on the government programs that are going to be bankrupt. They're the ones who are going to get sick and die because of RFK Jr. And, honestly, good. They're going to get exactly what they voted for.
2. The public is very stupid. And if Republicans are just going to make up stuff or make mountains out of molehills, then the Democrat is going to have to spend the entire campaign disputing the idea that six year olds are getting sex changes in public schools and that millions of babies are being executed. Remember that it's impossible to dispute this stuff with these people because they only believe things if Trump said it. Harris could've paid for thousands of hours of ads disputing literal nonsense, and it wouldn't have mattered because Trump says they're happening. If people believe in demons and monsters and secret pedophiles and things that are not happening, I don't know how a campaign is supposed to respond to that.
Again, this is a problem with the distribution of stupid people.
I do think, even if they'd won, the Democrats were going to need to re-evaluate what they were going to do. I think both parties are in trouble hypothetically for 2028 (if Trump dies and we get to have elections). The Trump coalition is held together exclusively by Trump himself. I assume a good deal of the Trump vote stops voting as soon as Trump is out. They like him. They obviously don't care about his policies or his performance. If you ask them questions about Trump's actual politics, they can't name anything they like. It's all vibes with Trump.
That's why no one has been able to replicate what Trump did. No one's even come close. So I don't think anyone is going to be able to inherit the Trump vote. I think a lot of it will evaporate or it'll split into factions that won't agree with the other.
Democrats want groups of people that want different things. Trump held them together, but they don't have a good message because the message gets undercut. Educated suburban white people are worried about the future. Blue collar black voters are worried about today. I think the identity politics needs to stop, but I think it's more about Republican perception of identity politics than anything else.
Again, this is why Democrats need to reach out to more stupid people. Republicans can literally generate a crisis out of nothing because their people believe anything. Two people got transgender surgeries in prison, and that's basically all Ted Cruz ran on. They took a theory that is shown in advanced legal classes and claimed it was being taught in preschools. Republicans don't need evidence or numbers. Someone on Fox News just needs to say "One hundred million young children today were killed by migrants" and people believe them.
Since the country seems to be majority stupid people, they need to figure out how to get them back. Democracy will only work if the stupid people are distributed evenly.
Democrats are blaming Biden for the loss, for wasting time, for not committing to one term, for not letting a new candidate take center stage well in advance and distinguish themselves as separate from Biden, and for turning a deaf ear to inflation and the pain it was causing the working class.
I agree with some of this. I admit that I was intrigued by the idea of Biden being a one-term president, but I think the entire endeavor may have been doomed from the start. As per usual, the Democrats are 100% on the right side of history but are awful at playing politics. Even if Biden had agreed on January 21st, 2021 that he was going to be a one-term president, I don't know what you do about Kamala Harris. She was chosen to appease black voters, and even though she was the best of that group, she obviously wasn't the right candidate for 2024.
Would three years of getting to know her help Kamala? Or hurt her? If she was the de facto 2024 candidate, would the Biden Administration have done anything differently? And if so, why? Even if Biden expected to run in 2024, he was almost 80 or above 80 for his entire presidency. Even if he didn't drop out, there was a reasonable chance that she would've been the candidate because of Biden's death. So it doesn't make sense for them to treat her any differently whether Biden announced he was a one-term president or not.
Would she have gotten credit for more of Biden's wins and allow Biden to take blame for more of his losses? I guess...but why would Biden do that? He only gets one term and he's basically using it to prop up Kamala Harris? I don't see why Biden would do that or why he'd be forced to do it? I think they probably could've put Kamala up front more. She obviously worked on her public persona because it went up the more people saw her. But again...what would she do that she wasn't already doing?
And I still just do not believe in any world would people have been okay with an open primary. If she wins, it would upset the black vote (which was already teetering) because they would've (rightfully?) seen the party as using her for the win in 2020 and discarding her because they didn't think she could win the big job. I assume the process would've gone the exact same way as Biden's primary did - a random democrat would've gone against her, there would be no debate, and she'd win every state. I don't think it would've accomplished anything.
Would the extra time have helped? Maybe? But I feel like her campaign did a pretty good job of outlining her proposals. Time wouldn't have helped her distance from Biden because that was a choice. I'm also not sure how much distancing from Biden would've helped because you might end up making your base mad if you throw your popular (within the party) president under the bus.
But let's assume that they could've had an open primary without upsetting the black vote (or the women vote). Who beats her in a primary? Gavin Newsom? Does he beat Trump? Gretchen Whitmer? Is she any more ready than Harris was? I like Pete Buttigieg, but I think it was the wrong election to have a gay candidate.
When you look back at it, it seems like no candidate had any chance. People wanted Trump. And boy are they going to get him.
******
Now was there something Biden, as president, could have done? Almost certainly. I don't understand why more wasn't done at the border. Seemed like an easy enough win, particularly as his border policy didn't win any voters. I have to assume his border policy was designed to get Latino votes back, but it sure didn't work.
I think the infrastructure bill was good. I think progress was made on climate stuff. But I think the biggest failure was probably Biden's inability to make any progress with the blue collar voters that a) were traditionally democratic and b) voted for Barack Obama. Even the stuff he did with unions fell on deaf ears. He saved their pensions, and they still didn't endorse him.
I don't know. It's a mess. The only good news is that, if the Republicans allow another presidential election, I think the country is going to be a disaster in 2028. It will probably be a big enough disaster in 2026 that the Democrats should win huge in 2026. There will be gas shortages, food shortages, insanely high prices, lost jobs, American troops on at least one battlefield (I assume helping wipe out the Palestinians and maybe finishing off Ukraine), and massive loss of rights. I assume even some hardcore Trump people are going to massively regret their votes as soon as this time next year.
But what does the Democratic base look like? I really think trying to figure out how to get all the stupid people back might help. I don't know how you do that. More racism? They seem to like wearing ridiculous clothes. Maybe Democrats can capitalize on that somehow? Free meth?
I think the hope is that Trump keels over really early into his presidency (or, preferably, prior to inauguration) and that Trump being out of the picture removes the incentive for Vance and Graham and a lot of the Republicans who have openly been very anti-Trump in the past to keep doing this song and dance on his behalf. Vance is probably more likely to do Project 2025 stuff, but he's not as likely to get out of NATO, sell national secrets for bail money, or overthrow the government. I think Vance is an extremist and would be a bad president, but I don't think he's out to destroy the American government and Trump is. Trump would be like Putin. Basically any other Republican would be bad but not apocalyptic (in my opinion).
And that's what I was looking forward to. If you watched Trump surrogates in power, they almost universally refused to openly endorse much of the crazy Donald Trump stuff. They talk about "oh Trump meant this" or "Trump speaks in metaphors" or "Trump uses a lot of hyperbole" or whatever. I think Trump would absolutely have Liz Cheney executed and have Biden and Harris and especially Obama thrown in jail. I think Vance wouldn't even consider any of that stuff.
Again, the courts are gone. I assume gay marriage is gone. I assume a national abortion ban is coming. I assume interracial marriage being illegal is on the table. Same with contraceptives. No one is going to stop that.
But I don't think Vance or most Republicans actively want to destroy the economy. I think Trump does.
Oh boy, you are really struggling.
Okay. Republicans love the Electoral College. Because, prior to last night, the Republicans hadn't won the popular vote in a long time. So even though no other modern democracy copied it, they have fought every attempt to eliminate it. The funny part is that the Electoral College was established because the Founding Fathers didn't respect the average American. They found the average American to be too stupid to understand anything enough to make a decision on who to vote for. They had the opportunity to give people a direct vote, but the framers thought the people were too stupid to vote.
The people that love the Electoral College and the Founding Fathers are the people the Founding Fathers respected the least so they created the Electoral College. It is a joke at the expense of Trump voters. Who are too dumb to vote and who the Founding Fathers did not (and would still not) respect.
If the 18th Century Electoral College had been around, Trump would have gotten zero votes. Because the electors would have been educated enough to realize that Trump is an idiot.
You are correct that women couldn't vote and minorities couldn't vote and that rich white men were who the elites wanted. All beside the point. Kamala also wouldn't be the candidate because she is both a woman and black. So also beside the point. There obviously would've been a different candidate for Trump to run against, but the point is no educated person would ever vote for Trump. And since all the electors were educated, Trump would get zero votes under the system that Republicans love so much.
Because Trump is an idiot and his voters are too stupid to vote under that system. That's the entire joke. It wasn't that complicated.
You're missing the point. Trump's voters love the Electoral College. And the Electoral College was created because of them. Of course, as idiots, they also don't get that the joke is on them.
Now Trump is also looking to deport a decent number of his own voters so if we get another election again, Democrats will have a better chance. Of course, Trump won't care because he only cares about himself.
Goodbye America. Welcome to Gilead.
I don't think Trump would want to be the leader of Gilead. That's something Vance might want, but Trump would be much more interested in running a place with no religion at all. He would hate all the porn stars that he keeps around him to be dressed like that.
(Evangelicals are so stupid).
The Electoral College was a compromise to give slave states more power.
The Founding Fathers absolutely intended for wealthy white men like Trump to be in charge, because that's who they were.
Well, yeah. Of course. Almost every one of our presidents has been a rich white man. But you cannot argue that the vast majority of Trump's voters are the people the Founding Fathers thought were too stupid to vote. And they were right.
It is funny that the same people that love to defend the Electoral College are the same exact people who the Founding Fathers thought were too stupid to let vote. It was literally created because the framers thought they were too uninformed to vote.
250 years later, nothing has changed.
I think America will survive. This isn't a fatal blow any more than Hitler was a fatal blow for Germany. We have a very stupid and very selfish president who will sell us out to Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and others. But he's old and will die sooner than later. The Supreme Court will be lost for generations, but the country will survive. The economy will be in tatters, and I assume the world will need to move to a different reserve currency with the shape the dollar will be in.
But extreme autocracies like the one Trump wants don't last forever. Particularly when Trump, again, is very old and in poor health and has no clear heir. I think if Trump dies sooner than later, Vance will be more of an existential threat than a physical one. I assume he'd still be owned by Russia and China, but there's less evidence that he's as comically manipulated by other autocrats. I also gotta think that Vance is more of an opportunist than a true fascist, and he might allow for a free and fair election if given the choice.
Remember that Hitler died cowering in a bunker. Mussolini was executed. Bad men win, but history is full of ones that died horribly.
She didn't say any of that. She let Trump hammer away with a very effective ad that made it seem like it was a high priority for her. It put her in the identity politics box that makes people not vote for Democrats. Politics is perception. It doesn't matter what the truth is, it matters what people think the truth is.
Again, Democrats need to do better about getting idiots to vote for them. Idiots just elected Trump because they are idiots. They have the brains of children, and they make decisions like children.
When you offer a child the choice between one piece of candy right now and ten pieces of candy if they wait ten minutes, the child will always pick the one piece of candy right now. Their brains are not developed enough to understand that they get more if they wait, and they are too focused on getting the candy right now. That is Trump voters. They do not have brains developed enough to think critically about anything, and they have no ability to understand that they just sacrificed their own economic outlook because two people got sex changes under a Trump policy.
And when they suffer economically or when Trump voters are deported or when costs skyrocket because of idiotic tariffs, they'll get no sympathy from me. They should consider it time out for the children they are.
Harris wasn't vetted like a primary favorite would be. She never would have gone unopposed if Biden had declared he wasn't running a year ago, like he should have. Trump pounded her non-stop with that clip of her supporting publicly funded sex changes for prisoners and she didn't even try to respond. If she'd been through the primary process that would have come out sooner and either she'd have found an answer or someone else would be the nominee.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. How many people have "too many sex changes for prisoners" as their top issue? Top 10 issues? Top 100 issues? It's a nonsense issue that accounts for basically no expense to taxpayers, and it was a Trump policy.
So prisoners are going to keep getting sex changes, because that's what the Trump administration wants, but he's going to torpedo the economy, deport millions, put Eileen Cannon on the Supreme Court, put RFK Jr in charge of health, remove fluoride from the water supply, ruin farmers, destroy manufacturing in the United States, destroy NATO, and join with Russia, China, and the great autocracies of the world? Or maybe he will eliminate it and save the country between $16,000 and $128,000 for the two federal inmates who have received public-funded sex changes.
That's 0.000007552% of the federal budget on the high end. But Dean Phillips was going to mention that on a debate stage and it would've just ended her campaign. Ridiculous.
I don't love the version of Lex on Superman & Lois. I don't buy that this is Lex Luthor, and he doesn't feel like any version of the character that I recognize. He doesn't seem like he's all that smart. He's ruthless and physically imposing, but that's about it.
Rosenbaum will always be my favorite Lex, but between Eisenberg, Cryer, and Cudlitz, I feel like we've lost who Lex Luthor is supposed to be.
Dems ran a weak candidate, untested by primaries, and paid the price.
I think this is a BS argument. Kamala wasn't the best candidate ever, but she had a positive approval rating. She ran a strong campaign and built a ton of enthusiasm. The primary argument is also bad because there's no evidence that there was any scenario where there would've been a true open primary. The odds are, even if Biden had announced that he wasn't running for re-election on January 21, 2021, that she would have run unopposed as long as she wanted to run at all. In fact, even if there had been an open primary, you would've come here and said that "her own party didn't even believe in her enough to crown her as the nominee.
And Trump is historically unpopular so I don't see how he's not a "weak candidate" as well. I think pretty much anyone should've been able to beat Trump. I'm not ready to go down the same road as QuinnSlidr, but something is really suspicious about this. Not even Trump-sponsored polls were this rosy. Trump is extremely shady, works with people that are extremely shady, and he's been planning something for four years. For him to win so easily is extremely suspicious.
And since we're unlikely to have legitimate elections in this country any time soon, I'm cool doing a little election denying of my own.
******
I'm so annoyed and frustrated and angry. So many people voted against their own interests, and they're going to pay. Farmers in the midwest are going to lose their farms, either because they're crushed by tariffs or crushed by a lack of a workforce. Poor blue collar workers are going to lose their unions, and they're going to be crushed by increased prices and a dreadful economy. Latino men that voted overwhelmingly for this man are going to be deported, whether they are citizens or not. Muslims who did protest votes or voted for Trump will be deported and Gaza will be destroyed. Republicans who spent decades fighting the Soviets are going to hand Europe to Putin.
If we ever get another true election, Democrats need to find a way to get stupid people back. Letting all the stupid people be in one party was the biggest mistake that the Democrats made. But with all the war and disease and poverty that are coming, the Grim Reaper might take care of enough of those guys in the mean time.
Okay I've been feeling good all day, but this looks like a disaster. She might be able to salvage a win in the blue wall, but that's the only hope at this point. What a nightmare.
I'm gonna go kiss my daughters, whisper an apology to them, and go to bed. Maybe this will all end up being a bad dream.
Gonna have to hope that the polls that closed late are huge for her in Georgia. North Carolina doesn't look as bad but not great, obviously.
Looks like we might be hoping for 270-268. I was hoping for a bigger win than this, but might be time to adjust hopes to *any* win.
Hahaha. Awesome.
I hope you're right. It'll be impossible to know until later, but I'd be willing to bet that Trump can't get all the voters he needs to show up. I also think that polls probably overstated his support with Republican women and minority men, but again we won't know.
On Trump's crowd sizes....let's not read too much into that. There's no correlation between going to rallies and voting. Trump had huge rallies in 2020 and lost. Being enthusiastic about sitting in some arena until 1am listening to the same stories they've heard a thousand times and being enthusiastic about voting is very different. I think what's happened is that Trump's rallies have lost their novelty value with a lot of people. But I don't necessarily think people are less enthusiastic to vote for him. I could be wrong and it doesn't matter what I think because we'll know soon enough.
But you're still right that low propensity voters are less likely to vote.
My keys:
- Can Trump get enough of his low-propensity voters to the polls with no ground game?
- How many pro-Harris women in a Trump household will actually vote for Harris? Have Democrats convinced them to keep their vote a secret, or have conservatives convinced them to vote with their husbands?
- How are black / Latino men going to vote? Do they go back to Harris or go to Trump? And at what rate?
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.
I guess it depends, right? In 2020, we had the red mirages in all the swing states because a vast majority of mail-in ballots in those states were Democratic. This year, as republicans love to point out, it's still much more democratic but the gaps have closed. That means either less Democrats are voting in total (unlikely), more Republicans are voting in total (unlikely), more of both are voting (unlikely), or that more Democrats and less Republicans will be voting on Election Day (the consensus opinion).
And we know some of the stats to at least have an idea of who's going to get more of the mail-in ballots. If they've finished counting the Election Day votes in Pennsylvania and she's winning? Then she's winning big. Even if they finished counting and he's only up a little, she's probably winning big (or at least big enough to call even before a lot of those votes are actually counted).
And I think there will be signs. Female turnout. Minority turnout. White turnout. There are people that are going to be able to see things that most people can't, and I think we're going to know pretty early whether the polls were right and it's going to take days or if the polls were wrong (in either direction) and it'll just drag out until people feel comfortable officially calling it. I could be wrong, but I feel like we felt pretty good the next day that Biden was going to win.
I'm hoping and praying for a safe day with no violence.
I just don't have the time or desire to deal with people who have a disposition where they think they know everything, and have no desire to admit that they are wrong if presented with the real facts and evidence proving them wrong..
I'm right there with you.
That was very insightful - thank you for posting it! 
******
I forgot to share a story from the weekend. The area that I live in is trending blue but is still pretty red. There's a number of Trump signs that I glare at angrily as I drive by. A number of homes in my neighborhood have Trump signs in their front yards, and I make sure to not look directly at their houses as I walk by with or without my children. I judge them, and I don't feel good about that. They are my neighbors, after all.
On Saturday, I was out with my youngest daugher. She'd been good all week, and I was taking her to the park and out to lunch as a reward. In between the park and lunch, I had to take some items to the UPS store to return them to their respective stores. As I pulled up, I noticed a young teenager (my guess is 13 but as I've gotten older, teenagers are looking younger and younger so I suppose he could've been as old as 16 or 17) taking boxes into the store with his mother. He was wearing a red hat.
Now despite living in a fairly red area, I've only seen two MAGA hats in the wild. One was at a local nursery (for plants, not children). He was friendly enough as he saw me with my family, but I did not smile back at him. We passed each other a couple times in the rows of plants, and I exchanged no pleasantries with him. He was making a political statement and I gave him no reaction.
This was different. He's a kid. Is this a kid who likes Donald Trump enough to want a hat? Do his parents love Trump enough to get their kid a hat? Or they let their kid wear that hat? Do they feel comfortable enough letting their child wear a hat for a felon? Knowing that they're opening up their kid to political thoughts from both sides? The man at the nursery that was possibly looking for reactions from both sides was one thing, but this was a kid.
I walked in with my daughter holding my items. He came in right behind me, and I could see from my periphery that he was, again, holding a stack of boxes in his hands. As a good Texan boy, I knew it was good manners to hold open the door for him. He needed my help, and it was my duty to help. And if he hadn't been wearing that hat, I would have happily done it with a friendly Texan smile.
But he was wearing the hat. And so, for a moment, I thought about ignoring him and letting him figure out a way into the door. I didn't see him in my direct vision, after all, and could've easily gotten away with saying that I hadn't seen him. And if I hadn't been there, he would've had to have opened the door by himself anyway. And I was holding my own items and my daughter's hand. I wasn't exactly free.
But I opened it. I thought about how little I wanted to make a scene in front of my daughter who has no idea who Trump is or what MAGA is or why her dad was arguing with some kid. I opened the door, he thanked me, and I said nothing. I didn't look at him or smile. I did the bare minimum.
And I hated feeling that way. Again, this kid can't vote, and I have no idea what led him to wear that hat. Maybe his whole family is conservative and he doesn't know the terrible things that Trump has done or said. One of the biggest news from the weekend was young voters discovering the Access Hollywood tape and playing it on TikTok for each other. If he was 13, he would've been 9 when Trump left office. He might have no idea what January 6th was about any more than I knew about the Oklahoma City bombing when I was around that age.
Maybe he is a little Christian nationalist, white supremacist, future Nazi, but so could any of the kids I passed that day that weren't wearing red hats. I didn't judge any of them because their clothing gave me no indication of their political beliefs.
And that's what I hate about Trump the most. The guy is a criminal and a monster and if he wins tomorrow, he will make the world less safe for myself and my kids. I desperately want him to lose tomorrow so I can stop worrying about this stupid election like I have for the last year+. But what I hate about him the most is how much he's making me look down upon my neighbors, fellow Texans, and fellow Americans. I don't want to hate people for their political beliefs. I don't want to hate some kid because he's wearing a hat. I want to be able to open a door and help someone and not avoid eye contact.
And, God willing, tomorrow we can put his stupid crusade to rest. I know there will be battles ahead, but tomorrow is the day we can defiantly scream "NO" into the face of fascism and prepare to defend that decision until Kamala Harris can take office.
I'm terrified of tomorrow, but I'm hopeful. And I'm ready.
Yeah, I just can't lump in 70 million people to be like that guy. I refuse to do to them what they've done to you/us. When you de-humanize people, it becomes okay to eliminate them. I don't want Trump voters to die, and I don't think you do either. We gotta keep our eyes on who the real enemy is, and we can defeat him as soon as tomorrow.
Agatha was entertaining, but as usual, too short. Just as you're getting into it, cliffhanger ending. Very frustrating.
Interesting, you didn't feel like it was a completed first season? There's certainly more to the story but I didn't feel like it cut off in the middle of a season. I would expect this story to either get picked up in a second season of Agatha or maybe something like the Vision show or Young Avengers.
Happy to jump in here.
I think Biden has been overall very good, but I don't think he's done himself or Kamala any favors. I have been saying, along with Grizzlor, that there were easy wins to be had at the border. I think the border bill was the right thing to do in a pre-Trump area, but I think it was foolish to think that Trump would let Biden have a win like that in a Senate that Trump basically runs. There were things that Biden could've done that could've shut that issue down without endangering anyone or being less humanitarian. John Oliver did a good piece on the border a while back talking about how Biden is *way* better than Trump on the border but we can still do much, much better.
I also think that he needed to have navigated Ukraine and Gaza better. I don't know if he and Blinken have been the best at world politics this term. And obviously, I think the thing that Biden could've done better at is promoting Kamala and putting her in a position to succeed. The border is toxic for Democrats and if he wasn't going to be more hawkish there then he really needed to keep her as far away from it as possible on the chance that he wasn't going to run again. They needed to put her front and center on some easy wins - obviously not at the expense of Biden getting credit for his own wins. But some area where Biden was already popular on that they could get her approval rating up. She's obviously gotten better at this stuff since 2020, and he could've used her.
But I don't think it's super fair to say that Biden's approval rating means he's been terrible. People blame him for inflation (not his fault) and don't like him because of his age. I also think we should get used to low approval ratings for all presidents in this environment. The opposing party will not approve just because, and I think it's reasonable for people in the president's party to say they don't approve of the job he's doing. I think the days of the president getting a positive approval rating are done.
And as far as valid reasons to vote for Trump, I still think a number of people are voting for the lives they had in 2016-2019 (they forget about 2020 or group it in with Biden's years). If you don't pay attention to politics or watch cable news, it's easy to forget or not care about who's president. It's easy to miss the things that Trump says or does. I'm sure plenty of people have missed the violent rhetoric and are simply thinking "I liked my life better when he was president"
And while that's ignorant and naive, I do think it's valid.
******
The Iowa poll has the potential to be huge if Selzer is right. If Midwesterners are really flipping to Harris over Trump (maybe because of tariffs?) then she's going to sail to victory. And as Grizzlor mentioned, the Kansas poll and the Nebraska 2nd district poll are more signs that something is going on.
Nate Silver has said that there's a ridiculous amount of herding going on in polls. And there seems to be an idea that pollsters are terrified of being wrong again so they're calling every poll a tie and essentially punting on the election cycle. If Trump wins by 2-3 points, they can say margin of error. If Harris wins by 2-3 points, they can say margin of error. They made no official pick and can blame margin of error as a unit.
But some of the smaller, focused polls in specific areas that people really understand are going to Harris. I'm not ready to declare victory by any stretch, but I feel pretty confident that she's going to win. I'm praying that it's evident tomorrow night and I can continue to get peaceful sleep, but I just don't know. As I've said all along, she just needs to get 270, but every state she gets above 270 will make it harder for Trump to successfully steal it.
I do worry that the bigger her win, the more violence there might be (because it might look to certain people as being more rigged), but I think it's going to be hard to get enough support to overturn a bunch of states.
I think Agatha All Along was really good. For a show I wasn't all that excited about, I think it was pretty great. Two comments:
1. It was easily the most LGBT show that the MCU has produced. I have no idea if this show is being shown internationally, but I'm curious how they'd edit around everything to get it aired in China
2. With the same people making this and Wandavision, I think they should be the Kevin Feiges of Marvel Television. Both of those shows are exactly what Marvel Television needs to be, and they should oversee it all. In addition to making whatever comes next from this corner of the MCU.
Yeah that's too many two-syllable words for Trump.
I've been reading some analysis from people on the ground. It was from a Democratic guy on the ground, but he said in Wisconsin everything but the polling leans towards Harris. That the Republicans don't really have a ground game or even much of an appearance of a ground game. Heard similar things in Arizona and a couple other swing states. The only thing that's pointing toward a potential Trump victory is a) the polling and b) the idea that the polling isn't leaning to the Republicans enough.
Early voting is obviously leaning Democrat but it's also really leaning female. So either the women of this country are going to save us or are currently stabbing us in the back (and shooting themselves in the foot). I think Democrats need to keep doing what they're doing but I also think Democrats need to surprise a bit on Election Day.
And hoping beyond hope that Democrats are doing whatever they can to prepare for anything the MAGA base is going to try and to do disrupt voting or destroy votes.
I feel fairly confident that we got this, but I don't know how to incorporate illegal activities into my analysis. So I'm just going to hope that someone else is considering all the ways this could go wrong.
I don't even know if it's that complicated. I think they've been lied to enough that they just believe it. It's The Truman Show or Room (not The Room). People accept the reality that's in front of them. And if you're in an echo chamber where the only facts you see come, essentially, from Donald Trump...then you accept what he says. Remember that a lot of these people live in communities where everyone votes for Trump. Their families vote for Trump. Online, they've built their online world to only accept right-leaning opinions.
So when your world looks like that, how else would you think? Literally every opinion they see is pro-Trump and literally every opinion they see is anti-Democrat. In their whole sample size, no one supports Harris. And yet you want to tell them that in these faraway cities with their billionaires and super-crime and godlessness, they're all voting for some woman? When literally no one I know even likes her or respects her? When Trump has PROOF that it's all rigged?
I think it's as simple as that. Lies that are spoken and reinforced a million times over that become the truth.
So I guess two things:
1. I don't remember, at all, the episode "Combat" nor the character of Titan. But I looked up a recap, and it seems like it was one of those "bad guy is in a fight and ends up impaled by accident" - let me know if that's incorrect
2. I think my philosophy on Clark is still heavily based on the idea that Clark is responsible for humans (and other non-powered beings) but not super-powered beings. Whether it's the idea that Clark is "an adult living among children" from (cancelled) or Clark "living in a world made of cardboard" from Justice League Unlimited, I think Clark's actions should represent that responsibility. I don't really even have a problem with Cavill's Clark killing Zod in Man of Steel because I think Zod would've easily killed millions (billions?) of people if given the chance. Zod was basically a crazy person with a gun, and Clark was the nearest policeman.
I do think that Clark has a responsibility, as one of the strongest beings in the universe, to protect people from themselves as much as possible. So Clark's first move shouldn't be to execute someone if there's any other way to save people. I like a Clark that will jump in front of a kyptonite bullet to save even one person. But I think if Clark, of sound mind, decides that the only way to save people is to kill, I think it's okay according to whatever system of justice exists in my head for Clark.
But even that, I think, has a limit. In the Snyder Cut, I had no problem with the Justice League beheading Steppenwolf because I think he was a threat (and I'm not 100% sure what that version of the Justice League was supposed to do with a captured Steppenwolf). I did think it was bizarre for Superman to cut off Steppenwolf's horn with his heat vision when he didn't really seem to be a threat. One, I think, fits the definition of justice. One was overly cruel.
I have no idea if I answered your question.
I'd be shocked if she went on Rogan before Election Day. I think she should've done it too, but I think the impact would be pretty small at this point.
Here's some more information that I find comforting
Sliders.tv → Posts by Slider_Quinn21
Powered by PunBB, supported by Informer Technologies, Inc.