They needed to win the popular vote by 3% in 2020 to obtain razor-thin majorities in both the House and the Senate. That was in an election which was a referendum on Trump, after a summer of race riots and at the height of the covid pandemic. Due to the Republican edge in redistricting, Democrats would have to TOP that performance to hold the House, and they need to do it in a Biden midterm. I don't see that happening, not when Biden has already fallen from grace so much in terms of approval ratings.

Fact of the matter is every 4 years, the supporters of the incumbent party talk themselves into believing that "this time it's gonna be different" and they're wrong almost every single time. It took the persistently greatest economy of our lifetime (1998) or an event on the scale of 9/11 (2002) to break this pattern. Ain't gonna happen with Biden at -8 net approval if you ask me.

You're assuming that Biden is the most important indicator when it comes to the Democrat's chances. While he is certainly THE leader of the Democrats, he seems to be an outlier compared to past Presidents. My gut tells me that Biden will have a smaller effect because he just doesn't have the magnetic attraction that Bush, Obama, and Trump have (both positive and negative).

Democrats currently have a ~3% edge in the generic ballot as of now with Biden underwater by about 3 points. Back in June, Biden enjoyed a ~13% edge and the Democrats enjoyed a 5-6 point edge. It seems to me that Trumpism is still fresh in the voters minds and Biden/Congress would have to REALLY fuck up for the electorate to treat Democrats and Republicans as equals. I think the most important data-point we're going to get is the Virginia gubernatorial election in 2021. Ultimately though, Congress is going to come down to redistricting. Nothing else really matters.

You should take a look at this guy's Twitter. No one in America knows more than him. Given that the GOP was mainly in charge of redrawing districts in 2010, it would be very difficult to gain significantly more seats from redistricting alone. They maximized their gerrymandering capabilities already. New York is an interesting case because they have the capability of decapitating GOP leadership AND netting 5 seats.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict

Idk why it took so long to just come out and admit it. Also not a single mention of holding someone responsible. Pretty incredible how we can drone 7 kids, and you can't even get some fall man general to at least show that such mistakes lead to negative outcomes for the perp? Not even jail or anything, but someone needs to lose their job over this, at least as a show.



This post was edited by ofthevoid on Sep 17 2021 02:36pm

Idk man it's like investigations take time and stuff.

But yea, shit happens in war. There will be no repercussions for this on our end because we've been doing this for years now. We said we're sorry and everyone just needs to move on.

Pretty much the whole world knew that we fucked up and killed a bunch of innocent people within a few hours of this happening. It shouldn't take 19 days to craft a response.

There should be though, it's fucked that someone's actions can take the life of 7 kids and they won't even lose their job over it. It's objectively wrong, and it's one of the reasons why the rag heads hate us and will always hate us.

There's a lot of procedure that needs to be done, several departments need to coordinate to craft a response once the investigation concludes, etc. There's also very little incentive to streamline the process though. It is what it is.

Yea, it's fucked up that we can "accidentally" kill people and get away with it. Maybe we'll get there some day but collateral damage is expected. Suppose the vehicle was a suicide bomber though. We saw how devastating the first attack was and the domestic ramifications that occurred. Even if it was only a 10% likelihood of it being a bomb, I'd still destroy the vehicle because so many more die if a bomb goes off vs. a drone strike. Then there's the international and domestic relations you have to deal with. Clearly, international relations can be ignored in this case because we've been doing this for so long AND this will be a footnote in the grand scheme of the Taliban taking over. These are shitty calculations that are done on a daily basis.

I don't think they will always hate us for these things though. We used to kill lots of civilians in South America/Africa not too long ago and no one really talks about it anymore. The grim reality is that time will pass and this will be forgotten by both us and them.

I'll be honest. I could care less.

Leaving Americans in Afghanistan was sloppy though.



Thats because the American IQ has dropped 10 whole points in the last 50 years. Not because Democrats are better at anything.

This post was edited by EndlessSky on Sep 17 2021 03:00pm

Your point about Biden being a less dominant political figure than Clinton/W. Bush/Obama/Trump is really interesting. The problem I see with this argument is that he's actually one of the national Democrats with the highest popularity and crossover appeal. Dems would much rather have him be the face of the party than Pelosi, Schumer, Bernie or the Squad.

I'm just sceptical that Democrats will be able to prevent 2022 from becoming a referendum on their tenure and turn the race into a contest against Trump or whoever else their boogeyman-of-the-week is when the midterms come around.



Regarding redistricting: to the best of my knowledge, a lot of Republican gerrymanders are far from maxed out. Turning Indiana from 7-2 to 8-1 or Iowa from 2-1-1 to 3-1-0 and so on. States like Ohio or Florida also have (even further) gerrymandering potential. The problem for Democrats simply is that they control far less redistricting processes than Republicans.

Regarding New York: the bottleneck for all NY maps is Westchester county. Iirc, Dems can only eliminate that many Republican seats if they draw a map with ridiculous amounts of bacon-stripping. Netting 3 seats sounds more realistic than 5, but what do I know...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 17 2021 03:25pm

it doesn’t matter. they will run against the boogeyman in 2022 and it always seems to work because they can always scare their cowardly supporters

They can't win without doing reasonably well with independents though, and I don't see that happening with 34 to 41% approval on most issues among this group.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 17 2021 03:38pm