Rov_Scam
2hr ago
I wouldn't have phrased it that way, but it is a fair question and I'd be interested in knowing how you think the Republicans should have approached this midterm.
Rov_Scam
14hr ago
I'm not doubting that the shift in the Hispanic vote had an influence on the election, but you seem uninterested in why the Hispanic vote shifted so much from 2024. And while it was a big shift, preliminary data suggests that Talirico still got a lower share of the vote than Beto did in 2018. These shifts precisely suggest that there isn't some kind of ethnic spoils thing going on, especially since the Hispanic population in Texas hasn't increased that much since 2010, at which time nobody thought the state would ever be in play for Democrats.
Because gasoline prices should have roughly the same effect on voters regardless of race.
Correct, but some races have lower average incomes than others and thus feel the pinch more. Some voters aren't ideologically inflexible and are open to voting for candidates of different parties. You seem to believe we can group people into demographic buckets and make assumptions about how they'll vote. Democrats did this back in the 2000s with their "Demographics is Destiny" argument, and you see how well that went. Republicans thought they'd have a permanent presidential majority with the electoral vote expected to shift to Texas from California, but now it looks like they'll have to actually win Texas and not take it for granted. Things change, people change, and you can't just assume that they'll stay the same. If your goal is to ensure a conservative majority by keeping out immigrants, it doesn't work like that. If Democrats think that allowing more immigration will allow them a permanent majority, it doesn't work like that. If things ever start to head in that direction there will just be a realignment. There are certain economically depressed white areas around Pittsburgh that 25 years ago you'd be nuts to think would ever consider voting Republican, but now they're prime Trump country. It's the nature of the beast.
Rov_Scam
16hr ago
Democrats are going to be much more cautious about impeaching Trump as it backfired in the past. The only way I see them moving forward with it would be the unlikely scenario where Republicans are driving the train where they demand it, and these demands continue long enough that enough Senators are on the record long enough and adamant enough that by the time they get to vote for removal there's nothing left to lose. The reason I think this is unlikely is that most of the vulnerable Republicans are already out, and, as @2rafa said, there's enough residual support in the party that it's risky going against him. You can already see this in comments by Ron DeSantis and others, who will blame anyone and everyone for the blowout except Trump himself. DeSantis, in particular, was cautious about blaming the loss on the Iran War without pointing out that Trump was in the driver's seat for that. In MAGA-world, Trump can't fail, he can only be failed. So if the ICE stuff turned people off it was because Kristi Noem handled it badly, if the Iran War was a mistake it was Hesgeth and Rubio's mistake, if tariffs were a bad idea then it was Howard Lutnick's idea, etc.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
Dude, that wasn't a calculation. It was an arbitrary number somewhere in the ballpark of your $5–$10/week estimate. But beyond that I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I thought it was some kind of explanation of why the Republicans lost so badly. If the only explanation you can come up with is that everybody else should have the same opinions as you, even when those opinions run contrary to core constitutional principles, then I don't know what to tell you.
Rov_Scam
19hr ago
You're making the same mistake that Republicans (well, Trump at least) did on the campaign trail where you handwave away voter concerns. "Well, I did some calculations and the increased prices as a result of my policies are only costing the average family $514.64 per year. You should be able to afford that." isn't a good message. Inflation is 100 basis points more than when Biden left office. Biden telling the American public that inflation was transitory and that no government response was necessary was bad politics. Trump telling the American public that cost of living isn't even an issue and, by the way, look at how great this gold-covered ballroom you'll never attend an event at is is even worse politics.
The big swing in Texas was Hispanic voters. I think the takeaway is once you have immigrants you can’t keep out more of them in a Democracy. Your only choice is fascism or figuring out how to run ethnic politics.
Those were the same Hispanic voters who propelled trump to a 14-point win in Texas in 2024. For years, Democrats assumed that they owned the Hispanic vote (which was always a curious position since they loved George W. Bush) and got owned themselves when they took the vote for granted. Then the Republicans made huge Hispanic gains and immediately pissed them away by assuming the same, even going so far as to redistrict based on this shift. The takeaway here is that Hispanic voters are ultimately like any other voters and will respond to the same things that other voters respond to. And this only considers Texas; it doesn't explain similar leftward shifts in Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Mississippi, and other places with much smaller Hispanic populations.
Rov_Scam
21hr ago
You or I could also say that, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, since neither of us are anybody. The race isn't going to be about who can recite generic party lines into a microphone. There has to be a reason why he, Ron DeSantis, should be president over someone equally as capable of holding generic opinions, and the reasons that existed in the past are no longer relevant.
Rov_Scam
22hr ago
Average US gasoline price in October 2006 was $2.32/gallon, or about $3.87 in today's money. Accounting for fuel economy is harder to do, but I would caution that while economy has improved as far as specific cars are concerned, the market has shifted toward less economical vehicles. In 2006, passenger cars accounted for 11 of the top 20 best-selling vehicles in the US. In 2026, they accounted for 4, and that's giving the Tesla Model Y credit for having infinite fuel economy despite being an SUV. The modal American appears to have replaced a sedan that gets 25 mpg with an SUV that gets 25 mpg. But this is all pointless because nobody is comparing gas prices now with what they were 20 years ago. Fuel economy was about the same one year ago as it is now, and gas was significantly cheaper. Hell, if you look at the 2024 election, it was over a dollar a gallon cheaper. People notice when it costs an extra $20 to fill the tank, and it's not exactly an occasional purchase.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
It's not so much about them remembering it as it is him not having anything to run on. You said it yourself, what's he going to run on, his COVID policy?
Rov_Scam
1d ago
He had his shot and didn't follow through. His entire schtick was that he was a fighter, and he wisely kept his distance from Trump throughout 21 and 22. But when he entered the race, he refused to go after Trump, even though Trump had no problem going after him. Maybe voters will forget how spineless he looked four years prior, but I think he lost his chance.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
Calling it an ad is a bit of a stretch, since it evidently never aired on television, or indeed anywhere other than social media posts. Anyway, this was posted on the 23, the NYT evidently had an article about it last Monday, and this is the first time I'm hearing of it, and I'm following the elections somewhat closely. My guess is that this is completely irrelevant and will have no effect on the election. Six million views sounds like a lot, until you realize that most of those views probably don't come from Michigan voters, and they're heavily concentrated among people who are following political commentators on Twitter, who presumably aren't among the category of people whose voting decisions aren't going to be changed by an ad run at the last minute.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
The guy he's interviewing is clearly an idiot. I can't find much information other than that his name is Jess, not Jeff, and he's some kind of ceramic artist from South Dakota who claims to live on a farm but apparently lives in the suburbs. Anyway, the other thing Tucker clipped from this interview is the guy claiming that the CIA paid Jackson Pollock large amounts of money to make "art" that was terrible for the express purpose of fucking with the Soviets, who wouldn't understand it. There seems to be some kind of agreement on Tucker's part that the abandonment of all the aspects of traditional painting that the Russians supposedly valued is indicative of American decadence blah blah blah, complete with pro-Russian undertones and blaming drug overdoses on bad art.
Aside from the entire premise being ridiculous, it evidences a complete lack of understanding of art history, which probably makes the opposite point that Tucker (and by extension his target audience) would intend. The Russians would not be shocked by something like Pollock, least of which because there was an entire Russian tradition of avant-garde art, the most notable proponent of which was Vasily Kandinsky. This mostly dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was suppressed following the Bolshevik revolution for being "bourgeois". Abstract art did not appear suddenly in the late 40s, but developed for a half-century prior to that, longer when you consider that movements like Impressionism were considered abstract at the time relative to traditional court painting. The Soviets not only knew about this, but consciously rejected it. The emergence of an artist like Pollock would have proven the Communist point about the decadence of capitalism, but is this the point that a conservative like Carlson wants to make?
Rov_Scam
8d ago
I don’t see why White Europeans should be governed by a corrupt commie because a bunch of negros voted for it.
You'd prefer being ruled by a corrupt commie whom nobody voted for?
Rov_Scam
9d ago
I mean, if they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had the required mental state and there is plausible evidence in the record that he didn't, the defendant is going to have a pretty good chance of being acquitted.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't require direct evidence. If the jury hears that Irving cut him off, he tailgated the guy for a period of time, pulled up alongside him, and fired a gun into his car, they can infer from the circumstances that he intended to hit him. Romero can argue otherwise, but the jury doesn't have to believe him. If Romero did make that argument, then yes, the prosecution could counter that it was depraved indifference murder because if firing a gun into a moving vehicle on a busy highway doesn't create a grave risk of death, then it's hard to argue what does, but the defense isn't going to make that argument for precisely that reason.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Right now they don't have to work any angle since he's only charged with manslaughter.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
The reporting I saw suggests that there is video, but that the police aren't releasing it. The video is supposedly how the police determined that the bullet ricocheted off of the headrest before hitting the driver.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
A jury can reasonably infer that someone who shoots at someone and kills them had the requisite intent to do so. Just because the defendant says otherwise doesn't mean that the prosecution has to come up with an alternate theory of the case. The jury isn't required to believe the defendant.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
The canonical example is a spouse walking in on an act of adultery and killing one of the parties. Some states require that the act be illegal. So something like finding out your son's baseball coach was molesting him or that your employee drained the company funds to finance a gambling spree might qualify. Some states have held that it's a sort of modified version of the battered wife defense, where long-term domestic abuse would count as sufficient provocation to reduce the charges to manslaughter if the provocation weren't severe enough to be justifiable self-defense. In the same vein, some states allow manslaughter in the case of incomplete self-defense, where the defendant genuinely but unreasonably feared for his life. Mutual combat would be another example, where the perpetrator develops the intent to kill during the course of the fight. I would also add that the killing has to take place before the perpetrator has time to reflect on his actions. If the coach admits he's been abusing your son and your immediate reaction is to beat him to death, that's a better case than if you drove to his house armed after your son told you he'd been abused. But, like I said, it's reserved for unusual cases where a juror would say "I understand that as a society we can't allow people to get away with this, but I understand why the guy would have gone to those extremes". It's not for cases—like getting dumped, or fired, or cut off in traffic—that normal people experience on a regular basis without getting the urge to kill.
If they have a veto-proof majority there's no reason to get rid of the filibuster. It only makes sense if they have the presidency.
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