Pre mid term elections--Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, and Washington state.

The media gets into a frenzy trying to show some type of trend before the votes are tabulated. I mean how many times do I have to hear that suburban women hate Trump........where were they in 2016? We will see, but if the big blue wave does not hit early on.....maybe the media and pollsters are as wrong as they were in 2016.

I think it is a matter of turn out.

Historically the dems should do very well in this first midterm. Are you already making up the excuses?

2seaoat wrote:I think it is a matter of turn out.

It's almost always about turnout if you ask me.  

IMO, in elections for Federal offices 95% of the population are inclined to vote either Republican or Democrat if/when they do vote ....  and won't vote for the other party candidate pretty much ever.   There's only a small slice of the population that could go either way depending on the candidates.

And the best way for a candidate to get their already inclined voters out to the polls is to get them scared to death at the prospect of that other party's candidate winning.

I am not making any excuses. The district in Ohio has been republican for almost 40 years, and went for trump with 11-17% margins of victory. The question is that these districts that Democrats did not even bother to run, are competing. In my congressional district in NW Illinois did not run a democrat for congress last time, but this time they are polling only ten percent behind. Things get right when people turn out and all districts have races. I am making no excuses because none are needed......

Ocasio-Cortez endorsed candidates lost... every single one of them. U turn?

Republicans outspent the Democrats five times in Ohio, in a race that's usually a cakewalk for 'em, in a special election (the least-exciting thing to voters) and a new one's coming in up in about 3 months, and still ended up with a too-close-to-call result. I feel pretty sure the Republican'll win it, but the fact that they're having to fight tooth-and-nail for things they used to be able to take for granted, and still barely squeaking by... even though they dwell in denial, that's gotta have 'em in a cold sweat.

And that race was less shaky for Republicans than over sixty of the ones coming up in November. And the economy's likely to be worse by then, looking at trending.

I know anything can happen and I've learned not to underestimate the frustrated stupidity of American conservatives, so I'm not counting any chickens but... damn, there sure are a lot of eggs.

zsomething wrote:Republicans outspent the Democrats five times in Ohio, in a race that's usually a cakewalk for 'em, in a special election (the least-exciting thing to voters) and a new one's coming in up in about 3 months, and still ended up with a too-close-to-call result.   I feel pretty sure the Republican'll win it, but the fact that they're having to fight tooth-and-nail for things they used to be able to take for granted, and still barely squeaking by...  even though they dwell in denial, that's gotta have 'em in a cold sweat.  

And that race was less shaky for Republicans than over sixty of the ones coming up in November.   And the economy's likely to be worse by then, looking at trending.

I know anything can happen and I've learned not to underestimate the frustrated stupidity of American conservatives, so I'm not counting any chickens but... damn, there sure are a lot of eggs.

Maybe we should be thankful Trump was elected, he might have sparked a progressive revolution.

Deus X wrote:

Maybe we should be thankful Trump was elected, he might have sparked a progressive revolution.

I'll never be thankful Trump was elected, but I do think a lot of his supporters are going to be pretty upset down the road when things swing back further left than they're gonna want. Every political action breeds a backlash... and Trump and his supporters are about nothing but spreading ill-will to everyone who's not in their cult.

Literally, all most of 'em are motivated by is trolling the libs. They don't understand policy or care about it, they just want to do anything that'll piss off liberals. Even common sense things that any sane person would be in favor of -- such as seeing that cars get better gas mileage (who the hell wouldn't want that?), or that people can get insurance with pre-existing conditions, or let consumers sue banks and credit card companies that rip them off -- they'll do away with just because they know it'll "piss off the libtards." All they're driven by is hating anybody they think is "liberal." It's pure politics-of-spite. They're willing to burn down the house as long as we're stuck inside of it with 'em. Kind of amazing, as a psychological experiment... or, would be if it was some other country and we could just watch it. Not much fun being in the petri dish with it, though.

And conservatives (and Christians) somehow think that spite's not gonna turn around and bite 'em in the ass down the road. The pendulum will swing back further to the left than it might have otherwise, just as a reaction to what people have been subjected to by this president and his supporters... and demographics are showing conservatism and religion dying out more every year, so, that's the future they're liable to get. And they're going out of their way to make it one that's unkind to 'em. It's going to be hard to summon up any sympathy for Trump supporters after the way they've been acting.

So, yep, they're having a ball now, being entertained by the douchebag in the White House, but all they're doing is building a bigger payback. Obama actually governed like pretty much of a centrist, but they wigged out like he was a socialist tyrant -- where they got that is crazy, but they believed it. Later on they might get somebody who's a lot more socialist, and I really don't know how they'll handle it. Just a matter of time before we see, though.

I once went to a lecture by a reporter who worked a lot around the world, and he said, "You know how your country colors the states to show conservative areas as red, and the more liberal ones as blue? If you applied that to the whole globe, pretty much the only red you'd find is in the United States." It's pretty inevitable. I think the right's raging so much, and flirting with going full-blown Nazi, because they know it's one of their last gasps.

The thing I'm most worried about is that Trump will start a war.

All the rest of the domestic shit can be fixed, even our trashed relations with allies can be quickly repaired. But he might just be unstable or disordered enough to start a war just because he can.