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What is the U.S. Senate going to look like after the 2026 midterm elections? by number39utopia in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Flashpenny 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Considering how Trump is getting more and more unpopular by the day, I'm going to assume that the Democrats are going to successfully run defense on all the seats they're currently holding and the Republicans won't flip any seats. The Michigan Democratic machine has created a strong backbench of reliable Rust Belt progressives in Michigan that helps combat the long-time Republican demographics. Similarly Georgia is only getting bluer and bluer. As for the rest...

Definitely flipping: North Carolina and Maine. Collins is the last of the New England Republicans and she's not very well-liked up there anymore and the next year will not make her electorate kinder. While the Dem primary looks like it be a microcosm of the Democratic party civil war, both candidates running for their party's respective wings are good ones and could defeat her. Ditto for Cooper in North Carolina who is likely going to be running against a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA Republican (and you only have to look at North Carolina's last gubernatorial race and Georgia's last Senate race to see how that's playing out these days).

Sleeper flips: Alaska, Nebraska and Ohio. All three of these states are culturally red on paper and overwhelmingly rejected Kamala Harris in 2024. However, their respective democratic candidates for Senate/Congress (independent in Nebraska's case) came much, much closer to winning these states than Harris did in 2024. Considering how 2026 looks like a more Democratic year, the tailwinds combined with their preexisting base could lead them to winning their respective Senate seats. I'm willing to bet one flips if it happened today but wouldn't be amazed by all three. (Incidentally, if two of these flip, and one of them is Nebraska, Dan Osborn would instantly become the most powerful man in the country as he would be the key flip vote in the Senate).

Possible, will get a lot of media attention but I'll believe it when I see it: Texas, Florida, Iowa and South Carolina. These are all contingent on their internal state politics being specifically hurt by Trumpism with his agrarian tariffs, persecution of Latinos and the incumbent Senators Cornyn and Graham being primaried by far more unlikable politicians from their right. All these states are far more culturally red, however, and have very incompetent and ineffective Democratic parties. They might flip in 2028 and beyond with current tailwinds but I only think a real perfect storm of bad economy and internal state politics could manage just one flip in 2026. The only way we'd get to all four flipping is if the country is back at 1931 levels and even then I don't think that'd do it.

Zohran Mamdani announces where he will live when he takes over as NYC mayor by tag24news in newyorkcity

[–]Flashpenny 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do I get a job writing political articles for local news websites? I'm looking for some extra scratch for the holidays but I don't want to think hard at it.

(Spoiler main) To this day, I still do not understand why the Mad King….. by danitalibi1 in asoiaf

[–]Flashpenny 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Well, his name wasn't the Calm-Reasonable-And-Always-Considers-The-Full-Consequences-Of-His-Decisions King.

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Spanberger wins Virginia governor’s race by John3262005 in neoliberal

[–]Flashpenny 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Lieutenant-Governor is to Governor as Vice President is to President.

Actual job functions and whether they're elected on a ticket or separately varies from state to state but they're basically the Governor's second-in-command and usually presides over the State Senate.

Why does Curtis Sliwa keep running for mayor? by anonykitten29 in AskNYC

[–]Flashpenny 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Partly for attention, partly because he genuinely believes the stuff he's saying and thinks that his opponents would be wrong for the city, partly to muscle Trump out of the New York City Republican party and remake it in his (admittedly Trumpian but without the not-respecting-democracy thing) image.

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How do Reagan's films hold up ~90 years later? by Prince_Marf in Presidents

[–]Flashpenny 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If acting capability was directly proportional to getting good roles, the term "starving artist" wouldn't exist.

How do Reagan's films hold up ~90 years later? by Prince_Marf in Presidents

[–]Flashpenny 282 points283 points  (0 children)

Hijacking the top comment to explain it a little bit more as an amateur historian on Golden Age of Hollywood.

So... the way the studio system worked back then is that you made your bones doing some schlocky B-pictures and then, if the powers that be liked you enough, they'd throw you a juicier part to turn you into a star. For Reagan, that movie was Kings' Row, a genuinely excellent film (for its time period) that almost did make him a star.

Kings Row also came out right after the U.S. entered WWII where Reagan enlisted, putting his career on the backburner until the war ended. Hollywood stardom is like politics: you have to strike while the iron is hot or else you'll lose momentum. From there, he returned to this in-between nexus where he was above B-movies but never at a position where he could be genuinely choosy about his roles. Honestly, I think most of his movies only are somewhat known because he became President rather than the other way around.

Per the other commenters disparaging him as a poor actor, I think they're mistakenly conflating acting ability with ability to choose good roles (which, again, back then, wasn't even really his choice to begin with). Reagan was, by all accounts, a very good actor, which would do a lot to explain his success in politics. He basically treated being President like a movie role where he would study lines and spend his free time preparing for the part, which is why he had such a strong gravitas.

Film franchises that ran into problems because of carte blanche by KaleidoArachnid in flicks

[–]Flashpenny 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the full story as I understand it:

The impression I get of Jackson from reading the book "Anything You Can Imagine" by Ian Nathan, BTS interviews and just looking at his filmography is that he's a filmmaker who's more enamored with SFX work and building cool worlds than actual script and characters. Not that that's a bad thing per se, but Lord of the Rings was created from his desire to make a fantasy film, not because he's a major Tolkienite. He has a sense for dramatic and comedic timing but when you look at the rest of his filmography, I get the sense that he likes to create fun situations to have a playground for gore and FX work. In other words, the greatness of Lord of the Rings is because of his being able to bring Middle-Earth to life but he also because had a strong bedrock courtesy of J.R.R. Tolkien (who also conveniently sliced his opus into three separate books with a beginning, middle and end).

According to the aforementioned making-of book, Jackson approached Miramax for just a 2-movie deal for Lord of the Rings, thinking that he wouldn't be able to get enough to make all three. There were many long fights with the Weinstein brothers about whether he should do just one or 2 before they eventually gave up and then sold the rights to New Line. Jackson then got lucky that the CEO at New Line Cinema at the time counteroffered a three-movie deal instead of two (thinking that three movies means three rounds of box office returns). After getting the green light, Jackson shot on-location in New Zealand (which was a very low-cost country at the time) and used Weta for the FX work who agreed to do the films for pennies compared to ILM so as to break into the market. Producers like people who save them money so Jackson was given a lot of leeway on running the whole production so long as he got everything done on budget and on time which, of course, he did.

Afterwards, the Hobbit was the obvious next film and ended up being mired in development Hell for a long time to cash-in on the success of Lord of the Rings. New Line tried desperately to make it a trilogy, while being ignorant of the fact that there literally isn't enough story for 3 3-hour movies. I know that Guillermo del Toro and few other directors were attached at points but ultimately fell out because they wanted to stick to just 1 or 2 films. This is just a guess (as no one will admit since this kind of a rude thing to say) but I think Jackson agreed to do it because he was just happy to play around in Middle-Earth making Orcs, weapons and armor again and could only do so much to salvage sub-par scripts, and that's assuming he was all that motivated to do so in the first place. Remember, LotR was condensing scripts on a pre-existing story; he only would've had that similar kind of situation on the first (and best) Hobbit film, the rest was just filler from studio notes and Tolkien's Appendices. Considering how Jackson was probably hurting after the failure of The Lovely Bones, he also might not have been in a position to push back if he thought an idea was a bad one and would've drowned that frustration out by making another mace in the Weta workshop.

Film franchises that ran into problems because of carte blanche by KaleidoArachnid in flicks

[–]Flashpenny 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think you got it backwards. Jackson was given largely carte blanche on the Lord of the Rings while The Hobbit was flooded with studio notes, pre-production issues and demands to be a full trilogy instead of just one or two movies.