2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BgXcLq_wMU

Oklahoma governor's race is a toss up.  I did not expect that at all.

[Razgovory]

It's gonna be a rough Tuesday.

[The Larch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BgXcLq_wMU

Oklahoma governor's race is a toss up.  I did not expect that at all.

How's the Arizona governor race? The Republican candidate is full on MAGA bonkers and really fucking scary.

[Admiral Yi]

How's the Arizona governor race? The Republican candidate is full on MAGA bonkers and really fucking scary.

538 has the loon up by 2.

Very surprisingly on that same page they have blue up by 5 in the Kansas governor's race.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/governor/2022/arizona/

[Zoupa]

I think Democrats will lose the House, the Senate and most governorships. It's gonna be bleak as fuck.

[Josephus]

Ok, so I haven't been paying attention to U.S. politics. But I'm pretty sure just a few months ago, the consensus was the Democrats were going to do quite well, that the abortion decision swung things there way. Now that's not the case. What happened? Inflation shit?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Ok, so I haven't been paying attention to U.S. politics. But I'm pretty sure just a few months ago, the consensus was the Democrats were going to do quite well, that the abortion decision swung things there way. Now that's not the case. What happened? Inflation shit?

No one has a genuine answer to this, and it's been the subject of endless political op-ed writing and etc.

The consensus from people I read is that the summer was an aberrant blip. People got upset about Roe v. Wade being repealed and turned that anger towards the Republican party. But, like so many things, it was a news cycle and nothing more. People don't get abortions every day, they aren't part of "daily life." There's plenty of centrist voters who don't want to see them made illegal, but how much does it really impact their day-to-day life? Sure, if they end up needing an abortion that they or a loved one can't get, they will change their opinion on how important it is, but that's only a small sliver of society. People are often very good at cognitive dissonance, there's plenty of women who had abortions before the age of 25 who are middle aged pro-lifers now, or at least indifferent to the subject.

I think the reasons the Democrats are looking bad is the same reasons as they looked bad prior to the Dobbs decision--and there is a matter of dispute there. There's basically a few schools of thought that I've seen pundits of both sides express:

- It's the economy, stupid. [Note a study recently came out showing that the performance of the economy largely does not seem predictive for congressional midterms. Going back to the New Deal era.
- Cultural issues. Basically Republicans have succeeded in making people very angry about a number of cultural issues, and the Democrats have no adequate response.
- We have such a polarized society that a huge portion of the electorate is permalocked now, and there's a weird 10ish to 15ish percent, that polling has consistently shown simply "vote against" whomever is in power, every single election. In a hyper-polarized country this just guarantees the Democrats will lose. This same theory would likely say it guaranteed the Republican losses in 2018 and likely guarantees the D or R losses in 2026 depending on who wins in 2024.

I think there's decent evidence for all of these, but little evidence anyone can meaningfully demonstrate which of these theories explains which segment of voters behaving in which way. There has also been a huge infusion of billionaire cash into the political system this cycle almost all going towards Republicans. While many analyses have showed that political ad spending appears to have diminishing returns that cap out at levels an order of magnitude below what is being spent (i.e. tons of that money is entirely wasted), there's no reason to assume it has 0% influence. It also represents the reality that as the Republicans have steadily dismantled our democracy, Citizens United has allowed the GOP to use such money surges in repeated election cycles. It may be the case political advertising in a crunch season only moves the bar slightly, but that persistent infusion of conservative money into politics likely has worked at a lower background level over the last decade in ways that aren't easily captured by various metrics.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Video of a Bill Maher standup this weekend on the state of the country and how democracy is likely ending--I largely agree with it:

https://youtu.be/HKVBvooZ2c8

I think he gets a few things slightly wrong, but it doesn't matter in the big picture (which he gets right.)

I'm a "supply sider" in why I think American democracy is coming to an end. I don't think it is Trump or specific politicians, it's the people. That's why one of the minor disagreements I have with Maher is him saying it is the most important election of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, with an entrenched anti-democratic public, that isn't true. If the Democrats somehow held the line, what would that change? When there is a groundswell of opposition to democratic norms, they can just keep coming back every two years--and they will eventually win. The country was lost when so many people turned on democracy, whichever election is the final nail in the coffin is mostly an accounting matter.

I also disagree with Maher's theory that if Trump loses in 2024 his army of election deniers will let him show up and be installed anyway. I actually don't think that's true because I don't think the specific nature of how our democracy will end will allow that. At least not in 2024. The election deniers are taking ministerial roles in many states, but those roles are governed by laws. It isn't actually that easy as a State Secretary of State or county election board to just look at a bunch of ballots with a result you don't like and say "nah, Trump won." That would be challenged in court, and even our currently Trump-infused judiciary would IMO based on what we saw in 2020, overrule blatant thefts of elections.

That shouldn't really comfort anyone, it's just saying some of the mechanics of our system will take a few cycles and a few more years to totally break down.

Also, the specific format of the current anti-democratic project, it won't really matter that much who the President is. The game is to defenestrate the Federal government and devolve power to an unelected elite, primarily businesspeople. America's post-democracy reality won't look like Hungary where opposition media is shutdown, or Putin's Russia where political opposition is criminalized.

Instead, we'll continue to have elections, they just won't matter. The goal isn't concentration camps or anything, it's more a society in which many people will live in areas where they have no protections for their drinking water, air quality, where their public schools have largely been gutted in the favor of religious charter schools, where your boss is going to be able to do more or less whatever he wants to you and you won't have any recourse. It'll be a country where wealthy people like me are pretty safe and comfortable, but if you don't fit that definition you likely will find a lot of things in your life get worse.

However, Maher is also right most people won't care. This is because most people are political ignorant, and won't link any unhappiness they find with their lives with the votes they are casting, they will be casting votes for "Christian values", and won't understand that is why their employer health plan gets gutted and they later get fired with no benefits, they'll blame that on socialists.

America has too entrenched a concept of free speech for us to see the non-regime media go away, and there is no reason to pursue that. The right has already succeeded in making that media irrelevant. They are enemies of the people. There will always be liberal lions crying into the void on MSNBC, but they will have no influence and nothing they say will matter.

Policy will largely be determined by whatever thing Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the disinformation regime they represent decide is good for engagement that week.

[Tamas]

In other words, you'll become Orban's Hungary.

[Tamas]

I am on this fairly large Discord of a bunch of gamblers stock traders full of young(ish) Americans and the number of pro-Trump idiots is just overwhelming. Really depressing.

[Berkut]

I've said this before to friends. I have moved from a Humanist to a straight out Carlin pessimist.

Humanity had a good run, but it just isn't going to work out. Neither side of the political spectrum can get out of its tribes long enough to let humanity function at scale.

Evolution evolved us into a dead end.

[Admiral Yi]

Ok, so I haven't been paying attention to U.S. politics. But I'm pretty sure just a few months ago, the consensus was the Democrats were going to do quite well, that the abortion decision swung things there way. Now that's not the case. What happened? Inflation shit?

I think a couple things happened.

One is that we heard a bunch of abortion advocates overselling the impact of abortion on voting, like Biscuit said, and bought the narrative.

Second, Mitch said primary voters had nominated a bunch of idiot Trumpists for Senate races (Walker and Oz come to mind) and that while the GOP was likely to win back the House he expected Democratic gains in the Senate.  My gut is that still holds true.  I saw a poll that had Fetterman with a four or six point lead over Oz.

[Zoupa]

I've said this before to friends. I have moved from a Humanist to a straight out Carlin pessimist.

Humanity had a good run, but it just isn't going to work out. Neither side of the political spectrum can get out of its tribes long enough to let humanity function at scale.

Evolution evolved us into a dead end.

The US is not humanity. Canada, the EU, Japan, NZ, Australia and a bunch of others are largely avoiding the shitshow.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I mean NZ and Australia are like 0.5% of humanity combined. The EU is...not remotely looking like it is safe from this, and Japan is a little uncertain on a number of fronts as well.

It's also worth noting most of humanity wasn't on board with Western liberal democracy to begin with, so losing the largest and most powerful Western democracy doesn't bode well.

[Zoupa]

Sure, but democracy didn't start with the US and it won't end with it.