Idea: every post on Mastodon should be hidden behind a content warning, with the most common being *BORING*
Paul Montgomery
- 19 Followers
- 43 Following
- 21 Posts
Founder of http://fanfooty.com.au, plus a new mobile game venture called Tickle Monster. Dad, nerd, Melburnite. Also poliblogger & troll toecutter.
– There were no scandals over 4am MASSIVE VOTE DUMPS. Such dumps did occur on a small scale in places like NV, GA and AZ, and they may end up being crucial to the results there, but for some reason the right-wing media hasn’t been all over them like a cheap suit like they were last time. In fact the media has been in a state of shock, just about. Tucker Carlson looked like he was on quaaludes in his first post-election opener, starting with a whine about how long AZ is taking to count its votes but not alleging any tally-changing shenanigans. Despite a raft of 2020 denialists gaining office, there was almost no 2022 denialism spoken about in media of any type today. Where are the much-ballyhooed army of GOP lawyers going on Newsmax and OANN screaming about irregularities? Very low energy by the wingnut wurlitzer. Do they need to be turned off and on again?
3/3 #midterms #9november
– Florida was a big win for the Republicans and, while it has been largely unreported, Texas was also as rock solid GOP as ever despite recent murmurings about demographic shifts. The Democrats threw a lot of stupid money at races they got whooped in in those states. Maybe they will learn a lesson, maybe not. 50-state strategies belong in the Howard Dean era.
– Kemp and Raffensberger were returned comfortably, underlining that strong and ongoing defiance of Trump is not actually career-ending in the GOP. Many 2020 denialists were elected in safer seats, but a lot lost in closer ones. One suspects that Trumpist denialism is going to be a cultural marker going forward but nothing much will happen about it, a bit like how everyone has gotten on with life post Obergefell and forgotten about it.
– Trump remains unrepentant, and indeed he is already escalating the turf war with DeSantis. If there’s one thing he knows how to do, it is play the Republican Party like a fiddle. The mournful op-eds about how the party all need to move on to the next guy are going to be short-lived, because Trump ain’t done by a long way. He still calls the shots… he may have missed the target this time but he owns the gun, the ammo and the shooting range.
2/3 #midterms #9november
Conclusions from the still undecided but mostly done 2022 US midterm elections.
– The Narrative from practically everyone, from pollsters to pundits, from quacks to quants, was that the Republicans were going to dominate due to short-term economic factors like inflation. This was false. The real narrative should have been drawn not from so-called “fundamentals”, but trends in recent by-elections where abortion was not necessarily the most important issue but did turn out to be decisive to the end result.
– Every abortion-related ballot measure was decided in favour of women’s rights. No doubt Democrats are looking at a lot more of those to juice turnout in 2024 if the issue is still live. Marijuana ballot measures had a more mixed set of results.
– Unmarried women saved the Democrats from what otherwise would have been a real red wave. It is perhaps too simplistic to put that down just to Roe, because there are a lot of Trumpy reasons why young people and women in particular would vote Democrat. The crosstabs don’t lie on that though.
– Much-mooted Black and Hispanic shifts to the Republicans largely didn’t happen, apart from Cuban Americans in Florida. Everyone can probably forget about that now.
1/3 #midterm #9november
Tim DunlopFediverse stuff like Mastodon feels a bit like the rise of the Teals. The major parties had built a wall around politics and acted as gatekeepers and everyone thought the only way in was through them. Then ppl figured out that wasn't true and the wall came tumbling down. Mastondon etc is like: you don't need the gatekeepers/wall builders.
Main point: Musk has broken the spell and driven people to risk trying something else, just like Scott Morrison did.
Main point: Musk has broken the spell and driven people to risk trying something else, just like Scott Morrison did.
What a sad state the Australian political press are in. No one believes their rubbish, it's wall to wall partisan attack jobs. #auspol