God Has Abandoned Us: U.S. Politics November 2023

An interesting quote from bluesky:

"I feel like the last decade was liberals slowly realizing that lawyers and judges are not actually impartial practitioners of the law, and now they need to learn - slowly, so slowly - that mainstream media outlets are not impartial observers of reality"

After midterms I thought all the money would start pooling towards DeSantis, up until I actually heard the guy speak

i actually wonder if trump's scarred-earth approach to desantis is weakening ron in his own state, just completely wrecking his strongman image, while perhaps paradoxically causing bad blood towards trump among hardcore desantis supporters who might therefore sit out 2024? idk i feel like florida is potentially deeply weird for next november. and i'm not sure RDS is the type of guy to suck it up and throw his full weight behind DJT after all this.

Yeah, I don't remember anyone anywhere saying DeSantis was more likely than Trump but headline writers

i actually wonder if trump's scarred-earth approach to desantis is weakening ron in his own state, just completely wrecking his strongman image, while perhaps paradoxically causing bad blood towards trump among hardcore desantis supporters who might therefore sit out 2024? idk i feel like florida is potentially deeply weird for next november. and i'm not sure RDS is the type of guy to suck it up and throw his full weight behind DJT after all this.

― omar little,

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/22/desantis-florida-republicans-governor-elections-00117514

Feel like any time Trump goes after someone it wrecks their career so who knows maybe this is it for him

My belief is that Biden’s “unpopularity” is largely (but not entirely!) an artifact of today’s ultra-polarized political environment. You can no longer rely on a president from one party to have even a token level of approval from the other party. So the ceiling is now 50%. So if they are a little soft with their party or among “independents”, it will appear like historic unpopularity. And then when the media makes a big deal out of it because they want a big newsworthy thing that makes headlines and clicks, it drives the conversation and influences people’s poll responses (the bandwagon jumpers who want to be on board with the latest popular sentiments). I’m not saying Biden doesn’t have flaws and hasn’t made terrible mistakes that have hurt many people. But I am saying that his historic unpopularity is not isolated to Biden himself, but is at least somewhat a product of the times. We saw this with GWB (second term), we saw this with Obama and of course Trump. The political environment got much more polarized with Trump’s rise, and Biden is our first post-Trump president. It’s not like we have a lot of historical data for comparison in the post-Trump world. And I’m sure we can expect this trend to continue with future presidents.

re: biden's age, i'm actually on-board with handwringing over the gerontocracy! not super-thrilled about newsom being the "fresh young face" -- who else would be in contention?

Whitmer!

So the ceiling is now 50%.

Try 40%.

Try 40%.

"Fuck all these assholes"/"Vote? Fuck that" wins every election.

Yeah I don't think yesterday was a big polling miss, I think more the national head to head presidential polls are coloring a view of the national political environment that's clearly not accurate. https://t.co/Pv4LT22VEJ

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 8, 2023

^^ agree w/that

the R dog finally caught the abortion car, and it's "find out" time

i do think the polls will skew more in Biden's favor over time but it does depend a lot on how well he navigates things currently. and also i can't imagine trump becoming increasingly hinged and un-isolated.

Take it from DeSantis' cold, stale chicken fingers...

It has turned out that support for warcriming, having a loser son, failing at student loan gifts, and being older than earth are terrible for yr poll numbers no matter how stable it goes.

yeah that must be it

it's just great that this description basically could be applied to either of our future leaders

(that is the joke)

It's wild to look at George W. Bush's approval ratings, which fluctuated from 90% after 9/11 to 25% at the end of his presidency. Even Obama had a 31-point difference between his high and low points (38-69%), and he frequently swung back and forth between net approval and net disapproval over the course of his presidency. For both of them, approval ratings were highly responsive to what was going on in the news at the time. People

Trump, meanwhile, had only a 15-point difference (34-49%) during his entire four years in office, despite all the chaos that came out of the White House. And while Biden's approval started at 57%, it's stayed within a mere 7 points (37-44%) over the past two years. People are no longer changing their minds based on events; they're making up their minds early and digging in their heels.

(Those are all Gallup polls, fwiw.)

clearly the way to higher approval ratings is to stage another national disaster

i vote for dinosaur invasion

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warehouse-13-artifact-database/images/9/9a/Fullcabinboard.gif/revision/latest?cb=20170330230817

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warehouse-13-artifact-database/images/9/9a/Fullcabinboard.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20170330230817

oh ffs

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/thecabininthewoods/images/2/29/Cabinboard_span.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/398?cb=20120421035619

I give up

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/thecabininthewoods/images/4/48/Tumblr_m8wg5dW2RD1qbvj0oo1_1280.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/400?cb=20121008042721

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warehouse-13-artifact-database/images/9/9a/Fullcabinboard.gif

would start pooling towards DeSantis, up until I actually heard the guy speak squeak

There’s still a chance Donnie keels over before November. Ron’s playing the long game.

don't rule out Donnie winning the nomination despite being dead

Weekend at Donnie's

also i can't imagine trump becoming increasingly hinged and un-isolated

Trump's quandary over the next year will be threading the needle between refusing to play the media game (I don't expect him to participate in one single, solitary debate between now and next Election Day) and needing to be at the center of attention every single minute ever (I also expect Fox News and others to routinely broadcast his town halls).

On the marijuana front:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/8/2204458/-A-majority-of-America-will-have-access-to-legal-marijuana-following-Ohio-election

The accompanying map is pretty interesting to me -- literally only one state, South Carolina, is now bordered by states that also fully ban it. (This had already been the case but it leaps out at me further here.)

https://images.dailykos.com/images/1245001/story_image/MarijuanaLegalStatusStateCartogram.png?1699463891

i'm not sure RDS is the type of guy to suck it up and throw his full weight behind DJT after all this.

I feel like one thing I learned from 2016 is they are all, every one of them, exactly that type of fucking guy

After midterms I thought all the money would start pooling towards DeSantis, up until I actually heard the guy speak

QFT, I was developing some level of anxiety about DeSantis based on his successes and his news coverage until a I saw a clip of him whining at the press, at which point I realized he’s a Bobby Jindal variant

literally only one state, South Carolina, is now bordered by states that also fully ban it

Georgia's gotta just be a matter of time now.

at which point I realized he’s a Bobby Jindal variant

Jindelta, if you will

OmicRon iirc

Hell I'm pretty sure a legalize-weed referendum would pass in Tennessee if it could get to the ballot. But our legislature did away with citizen-initiated referendums, they can only come through the Legislature.

Jaw-dropped at some of the Gen Z turnout rates from last night's election compared to 2021.

—Temple University: 523% HIGHER
—Penn State: 300% HIGHER
—College of William & Mary: 128% HIGHER

interesting if true

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-friends-struggles-to-explain-abortion-rights-election-results-a-majority-of-americans-dont-like-the-rape-and-incest-thing/

are state dems running on a legalize marijuana platform in texas? or do they hate winning?

That Mediaite clip, I almost never see anything from Fox News but when I do I'm always surprised at how shoddy and amateurish it seems compared to CNN or network news. All goes to the exceedingly low bar in conservative media, where ideological commitment matters more than any form of competence.

Law-enforcement and penal system stanning is the big hurdle to weed legalization in Texas.

are state dems running on a legalize marijuana platform in texas? or do they hate winning?

https://www.texasdemocrats.org/media/media/release-take-texas-higher-its-time-to-legalize-marijuana

Texas Democrats don't hate winning, Texas voters hate Democrats

Voters outside urban areas.

Georgia authorized medical use a couple years ago but the implementation is completely fucked up.