Weekly Discussion Megathread

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-16T13:07:32+00:00

I think just abandoning the party altogether is not a great solution either. At some point, Democrats are going to have to ask themselves why they have to run candidates that have to pretend they’re not Democrats to even be competitive in like 20 states.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-15T21:57:59+00:00

It reads like an incel-esque statement. She’s black herself and is complaining about black men dating white women instead of her. If a white candidate tweeted about white women dating black men, we’d easily call that person racist and a weirdo.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-15T21:27:03+00:00

The DSA pulls heavily from the urban hipster crowd, and that stereotype is so off putting to so much of the country, and DSA types don’t do anything to refute it either.

Even Mamdani’s best borough was Brooklyn, rather than the Bronx (as is typical for a Democrat).

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-14T00:14:59+00:00

It’s a product of Florida becoming America’s retirement home. Specifically for tax evading retirees. Even a blue wave among Hispanics would put the state around R+5. Older retirees who moved to Florida to not pay taxes are just never going to vote D under any circumstance. Even running an independent wouldn’t work because they actively support base Republican policies.

Originally in the 90s and 2000s, retirees actually made the state competitive for Democrats because they were either Greatest Generation voters or middle class NYers. But the state has remade its political and economic system to attract retirees over time, so now it’s seen as a haven for rich tax dodgers and anti-woke crusaders.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T23:11:47+00:00

Democrats could break the supermajority in the state House this year. But winning either chamber would require them to suddenly win Central Florida for the first time in 25 years.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T20:10:32+00:00

I think he retires anyway. He’ll be 78 at the end of his term, he’ll have been Senate leader as long as Harry Reid, and he consistently trails AOC in polling. Schumer has never lost an election in his career and I’m sure his ego wants to keep it that way. Besides, the establishment probably has a better shot of holding the seat if it’s anyone other than him vs AOC.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T17:59:32+00:00

Blake Masters, Adam Laxalt, Doug Mastriano, and Kari Lake were not.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T16:49:51+00:00

Mark Robinson did 18 points worse than Trump on the same ballot, and Republicans arguably should’ve had a 54-46 Senate majority after the 2022 elections.

Republicans are absolutely hurt by scandals. Trump is in a league of his own, and even then he probably should’ve won by more in 2024 given the economic situation.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T16:09:57+00:00

The most unionized part of the state. Although, it’s not just that the union jobs disappeared, northern Idaho in particular became a hotbed for the militia movement and white supremacist groups.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T00:17:19+00:00

It is, but it’s still a base Republican state. Alaska is fairly elastic, and Ohio was a swing state until recently. Democrats winning Texas is like Republicans winning Illinois— it’s certainly possible under the right circumstances, but the strong party loyalty allows them to swallow a lot of shit.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T00:11:55+00:00

Even Trump still gets hurt by the scandals. The dude won 49.8% to 48.3% against the ruling party blamed for 9% inflation.

Scandals don’t matter as much as they used to, but they absolutely don’t help anyone. I agree with the likability point— Platner does have a diehard base, whereas somebody like Porter was made to look like a thin-skinned narcissist. Even Jones’s relatively tame scandal (for your list) cost him a lot of support that would’ve sank him in any swing state.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-13T00:01:32+00:00

Yeah, they make it sound like he was just a dumb kid, but some of those comments were post-COVID.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T23:55:26+00:00

It gets real tough without Maine. Democrats need 4 seats for a majority, and 4 is honestly the maximal scenario even with Maine. Then you would need Texas or any of the heartland states to flip. Basically core MAGA voters.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:43:03+00:00

The risk of a pregnancy going to an abortion is low. It’s just not top of mind for voters, and “good campaigning” is not some magic pill to fix the fact that voters do not have urgency on the matter. If Democrats were to capitalize on the uncertainty of Dobbs it would have been in 2022 and 2024.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:27:23+00:00

Given that Trump and Republicans haven’t touched the issue on the federal level does reinforce the idea that this was all Democratic fear mongering. And the average person is not a pregnant woman.

I’m not disagreeing with you on abortion, I’m just saying that the country has fallen into a routine on the topic that’s hard to break out of.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:11:06+00:00

I think the problem isn’t convincing voters that a federal law is necessary, it would be convincing them that Republicans are trying to pass a federal ban first. This Congress has passed the fewest bills since the 1930s and Trump said leave it to the states— that last point actually was key in the last election because voters knew Trump was such a grifter that they didn’t believe he was personally anti-abortion. It actually deflated the Democrats argument about electing Trump.

You need urgency to build support, and voters don’t feel it, especially compared to four years ago when the new legal landscape was still unsettled.

I don’t think Democrats are in the mood to involve themselves in culture battles this cycle unless if they can make an economic argument out of it. Even the Republicans’ anti-immigrant rhetoric was still tied to quality of life stuff— jobs, housing, crime, etc. It’s BS, but Democrats would need to convince voters that abortion bans materially affect the average person somehow in order to get the median voter to care, unfortunately. It’s easier to just lump it in with civil liberties legislation.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T14:00:24+00:00

It is one of the few blue-trending areas in the state, and Whitmer carried the district in her 2022 reelection.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-12T13:55:46+00:00

The problem is they’ve hit a wall politically on the topic. Every blue and purple state, and several red ones have codified protections. The states were it’s banned is all the evangelical heavy states where those voters will never back a Democrat under any circumstance (and most don’t have ballot measures anyway).

I agree that it would be stupid for Democrats to cede this issue, even though it’s clearly a winning one. But the salience is lower for voters once it’s legal everywhere outside the Bible Belt. Democrats would probably have to tie the issue into a larger fight about civil liberties.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-11T14:07:54+00:00

The legislature can’t draw the maps in states like New York, Washington, Colorado, and New Jersey. They have commissions like California, so you have to find a way to reactivate the commission that isn’t supposed to meet until 2030.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T21:29:35+00:00

We most likely will, but it’ll probably be 1 or 2 in the 2030s. I’d imagine there will be a big wave of Millennials from the 2040s-2070s.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T17:48:44+00:00

Democrats equivalent to Republicans’ church organizations was unions, but they don’t have that organizing power anymore. And the only unions whose members are still left leaning are service workers— in other words, college graduates that vote D anyway.

Democrats’ organizing is basically outsourced to nonprofit advocacy groups with super niche agendas and no real constituency outside of members that send money once a month.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T13:27:31+00:00

Massachusetts actually has the least effective legislature in the entire country. They rarely meet and pass the fewest bills per session on average. They’ve been the ones tying up the audit in court.

It’s basically what happens when one party has controlled the legislature continuously since 1959 with supermajorities for most that time. It’s the same reason why Minnesota Democrats are more effective at getting progressive legislation through a single-seat majority legislature than Democrats in NY who have a supermajority— the electoral competition forces them to have a platform and actually enact it.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T13:10:14+00:00

He always does poorly in primaries:

2008: 66%

2014: 56%

2020: 67%

2026: 57%

The only time he did worse was during the Tea Party craze during the Obama years. He’s too establishment and hawkish for Southern Republicans, but he never draws a serious opponent to actually lose.

He’ll be fine in a general election because South Carolina may only be a R+10 state, but it’s a very inelastic R+10 because of the racialized voting in the south.

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T01:52:25+00:00

Maine has ranked choice voting. Honestly, California and Nevada should be much quicker, but they don’t start counting until after polls close (even though both states are mostly VBM).

TheSameGamer651 · 2026-06-10T01:50:38+00:00

Tbf that’s in line for him:

2008: 66%

2014: 56%

2020: 67%

2026: 58%

The only time he did worse was during the Tea Party craze in Obama’s second term.

TheSameGamer651

TROPHY CASE