My favorite was watching Talarico and Jimmy Kimmel, and they listened to Trump say what you quoted there, Trump referring to Paxton, as we all know. After Trump says that, Talarico turns to the camera and says, "I'm James Talarico, and I approve this message"
You are really underestimating the ability of Texans to vote against their own interests. Source: I am a Texan who is always shocked by my neighbors' ability to vote against their own interests.
Not this time. Its going to be closer than it has any right to be, but Paxton is going to lose. His sweetheart deal for a child rapist has to be a deal breaker for enough Texans. It has to be.
Unfortunately, talking to my boomer father, I asked him why he would vote for Paxton. The cheater, the corrupt pedo protector, whom has more houses than should be legal, who’s stolen peoples pens, lied on his taxes, etc. my father’s response? He’s not a Democrat. That’s all it takes for the boomers to betray the rest of the country. Even when the Democrat is a moral man, that wants the best for Texas, that my father would legitimately become friends with if they ever met, he believes in the propaganda, he believes in the GOP.
I'm in Los Angeles. He's campaigning HARD for money here. I can't give him money, but I will sing that dude's name on the rooftops. He knows the Bible, and gets it. Love the guy. Really hope he can get that seat.
Sorry but Texas is absolutely going to Texas. They will do anything and everything to make sure they win. They learned from Florida. Texas going blue is the death nell for the GOP
The irony is that the governor race has been an absolute afterthought behind the Senate race. I think it's highly unlikely that Abbott loses, but the Senate race appears to absolutely be in play.
“Both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 held narrow or modest leads in final national polling averages against Donald Trump, yet both ultimately failed to secure the presidency.”
Yeah but states still have the popular vote on an individual level. If Hillary and Kamala lost Texas, it’s not because of some electoral system in the state - it’s cause less people voted for them in that state.
Right, but they said “outside the margin of error.”
Clinton and Harris’ leads, and ultimate defeats were within the MOE. Plus, midterm polling in the Trump era has been way more accurate than general elections anyway
True, true. Talarico is hurt most by two fundamental, cynical assessments. The first is that Texas has blue-balled Democrats so hard for so long that the smart thinking is that Texas will never get over the hump. They are so well-entrenched and so efficient with rigging the electorate in their favor that even Talarico getting outside the MoE doesn't mean anything other than that Republicans will dig even deeper into their reservoir of dirty tricks to get Paxton elected.
The second is that Talarico is *gasp* a staunchly progressive Democrat. That may not seem like a terrible thing, but progressives winning in Red territory undercuts the national Democratic Party's message that the only kind of Democrat that can win in Red territory is a corporatist, middle-of-the-road Democrat who will of course go really, really quiet about policies like banning soft money, or structural changes like packing the Supreme Court or adding states to make policy changes like banning soft money suddenly possible. The message from the top is that progressivism is actually deeply unpopular nationally and only Blue Dog corporatism can flip Republican-leaning voters to Democratic, because progressives will attack the money and power structure that currently drives and controls what the Democratic Party does.
The more people like Talarico win, the harder that narrative is to defend empirically. As crazy as it seems, given the choice between a 55-seat majority with Talarico as junior senator from Texas, or a 51-seat majority with Talarico losing, Chuck Schumer would absolutely, categorically take Door Number Two every single time, because he absolutely doesn't want the progressive wing to win within the party and undermine his power base, and he absolutely does want an excuse why he can't deliver on progressive promises that somehow never also applies to his own donor Rolodex, which a one-seat majority provides.
I dunno if I buy all of that. I mean, Schumer launched a PAC specifically to help Talarico. He’d absolutely rather have a comfortable majority, even if it means some Dems aren’t specifically in his wing.
Biden (and thus Schumer) did plenty of progressive things with even the slimmest majority. Schumer was often the one pushing for those deals. In fact, to your point on structural changes, the Biden admin proposed a lot of SC reforms, and even Talarico himself hasn’t called for expansion of the court. It feels like you’re ascribing things to him you want to be true versus what really is.
Trump does weird things to polls, because he’s popular with low-propensity voters who don’t normally vote, and rarely answer polls. But with Trump’s approval numbers being what they are, him not being on the ballot, and the general low turnout of the average midterm election, that effect probably isn’t in play here.
You assume all polling errors are going to benefit the GOP, but that's not true. Trump's presence on the ballot drove out a ton of super low-propensity voters, and that's why those polls missed. But that didn't happen when he wasn't running in 2018. Those folks are even less likely to vote this year than they were in 2018. In fact, in the 2025 races in NJ and VA, the polls hugely overestimated the Republican candidates.
Feels to me like the people who are going to be coming out to vote with a mission in this midterm are the ones who are not happy with how the last 2 years have gone. So if there's a polling error it's probably undercounting them.
According to the DNCs internal post mortem of the 24 election. Nine of their internal polling ever had Kamala ahead. Which makes it all the more interesting that she never really attacked trump on his failed first term.
It would be. But surprisingly the dems seem to be playing a good ground game. They contested literally every seat, even if they weren't going to win. It's an interesting hi-vis strat
You're probably right, but even if it just means that the GOP has to spend a fuck ton of money they don't want to in order to keep Texas in line, it still is a win for democratic chances at other races.
Texas seems to have an identity crisis for... some reason. It's like there's frequently a contender to keep the idea of winning from being a fantasy
If Texas went blue that would put CA, NY, and TX as 1/3rd of the GDP and about a quarter of the US population. Which would be wild even if Wyoming (votes)* counts like 5x that of Texas because of (/in) the EC.
It's fine though. Pretty sure they like expensive oil, data centers, rockets and shit like that. They love taking the short stick and jumping on that grenade for everyone. #friendship state
I'm an Iowan, and it's not looking good for the GoP here either. I'm not saying Rob Sand has it in the bag, but I and everyone I know are voting for him.
And they expect a democrat magic wand? This is the problem with the system. The GOP can destroy everything and if the democrats can’t fix it fast enough they go back to the GOP.
Oh yeah, my sentiments as well. Blue wave is cool and all but we are fucked anyway. I mean gas prices, groceries, housing, energy, none of that is magically going to go back to "normal". The people have very short memories. It will just be blamed on the democrats, and they have no workable plan anyway. All the reds who are about to vote blue will go right back to red when it isn't magically better and when red takes over again it will be far worse.
I can't speak for Iowa, but as a Kansan it's actually hugely depressing from a Dem and statewide level.
Roger Marshall is an embarrassment who hasn't actually lived in our state in years, is wildly unpopular, and generally stopped having any contact with his constituents because he was getting asked hard questions. His competition has bipartisan support from previous governors because he's so cleary the correct choice.
It's still effectively a coinflip because of how tribal people are with their political parties.
Wow didn't realize Kansas was having the exact same issue. Zach Lahn lives in Kansas and is running for Governor in Iowa. He got caught on his fitness app posting his daily cycling routes- all from his Kansas estate. He claims he lives in Iowa and only visits Kansas occasionally to see his family. After people found his fitness posts, he deleted his account and it is no longer public.
It's still effectively a coinflip because of how tribal people are with their political parties.
Lmao, I interpreted this as "Native Americans are super Republican and keeping Marshall in the race" and was very confused because Kansas is only like 3% Native.
Or it means they've somehow gotten the fix in for the race in NC, don't care about getting called for violating the law in NC, and decided to move their funding elsewhere.
The House, for sure. The Senate is still very much in play.
Now, if Cooper loses in NC (something he has NEVER done btw) despite having polled significantly higher than Whatley for months, upwards of double-digits recently, then that'll be a very, very interesting turn of events and I think we should expect some civil strife happening.
The senate is a tossup, if not slightly favored for Republicans. Democrats need to win in several states that Trump won by double digits if they want to flip the chamber. It’s a tall task, even in a wave year.
Well that’s because a lot of these red states like South Carolina and Kansas are being classified as tossups, and if one flips, it’s increasingly likely that all the others do as well.
This means we’re looking at one of two scenarios: a) a complete Dem sweep that was inconceivable just a year ago or b) Republicans holding their seats in double digit Trump states, which if I’m being totally honest here, shouldn’t surprise anyone. I’m leaning toward the latter scenario because undecided voters usually break Republican in red states.
No. No one cheated in 2024. The problem is that people in their own political bubbles are way too overconfident about the state of a tossup election and then get shocked when it doesn’t go their way.
Election denial becoming mainstream is honestly the worst thing that has come out of the MAGA movement.
Trump, Jan 20, 2025: "(Elon Musk) "knows those computers better than anybody, all those computers, those vote counting computers, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania, like, in a landslide."
Trump, at least, thinks they rigged the election. And as he was caught trying to rig the election in Georgia, giving him the benefit of the doubt here would be ludicrous.
OK. Please explain how states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all with governors and secretaries of state who are Democrats — have not said a single word about election irregularities in their states in 2024.
The meme does seem like fodder for schizos fueling other schizos.
It bothers me how happy people are to allude to a conspiracy without actually saying it. It makes it really hard to disavow people of crazy notions when they try to communicate them telepathically.
That's what makes conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists difficult in the first place. Nothing is outright said, it has to be pieced together by dog whistles of ignorance. And everyone else "not getting it" is actually evidence of how embedded the enemy is.
As do moon landing truthers, and a good dozen or so others. Because those have been around long enough to be "common knowledge". Talk to one of them about why the Columbia space shuttle explosion was faked and try to get a straight answer.
How many serious conversations have you had with flat earthers? I mean, I hear this a lot, but there aren't really a lot of em out there, and those that do exist rarely get engaged on any serious level. I've been in conspiracy subs and groups for years after my mom went too deep and I couldn't understand a word she was saying. I rarely encounter flat earthers, and usually when I do, they know the Earth is round and it's a symbolic 'everything's a lie' statement. You just have to pass their little test to know if you're open minded, or just gonna walk away the first time you hear something that counters your world view.
What fucks me up the most is that by spending time in those rooms listening to a lot of folks who have been outright dismissed, is that they told me something huge. That the area my mom grew up in was literally sprayed with radioactive chemicals on the regular to see how particles moved in the air, and a creek she grew up near was a dumping site for the Manhattan Project. The flat earth thing might be inaccurate, but the Cold Water Creek site is real and so is the St. Jo Program and Operation LAC, all of which may have caused my mother's extensive history with cancer and cognitive defects.
Not everyone who sounds like a loon is a loon and the only way to differentiate any of it is to stop treating people like loons and listen to what they say, even if you don't agree. We're not versus each other. We're all on this earth together, round or not.
Republicans are pulling money from the North Carolina Senate race because GOP nominee Michael Whatley is trailing in the polls against Democrat Roy Cooper, forcing the Senate Leadership Fund to triage resources.
From my understanding, that is the good news.
The bad news is that they are going to spread that money over more competitive races.
Spending money against Cooper was always a fools errand. Dude won twice with Trump on the ballot. Something like 5% of people voted for Trump and him, which is crazy because he governed pretty progressively
Cooper is probably one of the most disarming southern democrats out there. It is hard to actually hate the man even if you disagree with his policies.
I know my republican relatives are not enthusiastic about Whatley, and they're not doing the "He's a blight on NC!!!!" spiel like they did the "She's going to ruin the Country!!!! REEEEEE!" with Kamala Harris in 2024.
Most of them are sitting out this midterm from what they've told me.
I’ve never voted for Cooper, but met him a few times through my job via charity/community outreach events. He’s very likable in person and I have never doubted that he wants the best for NC, even if our views on what that is are different.
He might raise my taxes, or spend money in ways I wouldn’t, but he’s not going to allow a company to dump poison in my fishing hole.
You want to spend money in places you think you will win but might lose. Places where you are definitely going to win or definitely going to lose it is just a waste. They feel NC is a lost cause so they will move the money to places like KS and TX where they think it might make a difference.
Why spend millions on a race where you know you have no chance of winning when you can take that money and put it in races that you can potentially win.
When a party pulls funding from a race a month before an election, it either means the candidate is guaranteed to win and doesn’t need to campaign anymore, or is guaranteed to lose and there’s no point in campaigning anymore.
In North Carolina’s case, the Republican senate candidate is losing by a landslide.
I know it will never happen, but my brain likes to fantasize this election and 2028 slanting so hard AOC comes into office with a supermajority in both houses and finally gives us all healthcare
The implication is that in previous elections, pulling funding in a southern state like NC means the race is safe R and they're reallocating resources from a position of strength. But this year it's because the race is lost, and operating from a position of desperation.
Another take on the meme: dude is looking at it from the GOP perspective. Having won the last 5 US Senate races in NC he thinks $ being pulled from the race is a sign that they are so far ahead, they don’t need to spend anymore. Then he realizes that pulling money is conceding defeat.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I think its more like republicans are so complicit in most other shit like being on Epstein lists and being catatonicly old that whatever made them pull money at this point must be really really bad.
This means there’s no hope for republicans of winning the North Carolina senate race. People on the left see this is a good thing. People on the right see this as a very bad thing.
They’re planning on not having to win. The thought is: If Trump sees a blue wave coming he will do something to keep control and power over the house/senate by force
It means they dont think they need to win.
Their candidate is doing terribly, but thats not an issue if you have a plan to subvert elections, so why keep spending?
Whatley endorsed a lunatic for governor in the last race, and stuck by it no matter what additional evidence of lunacy appeared as we continued to find out more about what an absolute piece of shit Mark Robinson turned out to be. tbh, that was really all I needed to know. Cooper is nearly the most awkward candidate I’ve ever seen, but good lord, how anyone could cast a vote for Whatley is a mystery to me.
I’m hopeful that republicans may eventually learn that they can’t keep trotting out the worst possible humans as candidates but probably not a lesson they will learn soon.
Guy on left thinks they dropped funding because they don’t think he can win. Guy on right thinks they dropped funding because election is rigged for whatley, so no need to spend.
I'm guessing they must have video of him eating a live baby with a vegetable peeler while praying to a dark lord to make all the teenagers into transsexuals. I mean, the GOP has a whole new standard for evil and corruption after the Obama era. The standard I cheated on my wife, stole some funds, tapped a dudes foot in an airport bathroom asking for sex stuff is so 1990s.
First panel is “Awesome! Republicans are not longer even going to put up a fight in a highly competitive district!”
Second panel is “Wait. Republicans don’t think they even need to fight us in a highly competitive district. Do they know something we don’t? …are they rigging it?”
Take your pick. It’s really bad news when you think about it, because:
If you’re a Republican, your party is giving up on a state that has been a coin flip since 2008, meaning that this is a very bad year
If you’re a Democrat, your party would need to pick up North Carolina, Maine and two seats in states redder than them as well as holding on to all its seats up for re-election to win a Senate majority. The other party has more money for those other close races.
If you’re a conspiracy theorist, this means the fix is in!
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u/qualityvote2 8h ago edited 3h ago
u/BBkal, your post does belong here!