Fox News Left Shell Shocked by Dems’ Election Night Romp

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 614 points –
Fox News Left Shell Shocked by Dems’ Election Night Romp
thedailybeast.com

A year after promising viewers a “red tsunami” in the 2022 midterms, only to be left with egg on their faces after the GOP drastically underperformed, Fox News was once again wondering what went wrong after Democrats romped to victory in statewide elections on Tuesday night.

Despite recent polls showing President Joe Biden deeply underwater with voters and even losing to Donald Trump in several battleground states, the Democratic incumbent governor easily won victory over his MAGA-endorsed opponent in deep-red Kentucky. And over in Ohio, a state Trump won by eight points in 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed an amendment ensuring access to abortion care in the state’s constitution.

The continued drag that undoing Roe v. Wade has had on the GOP was especially apparent in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin had promised to implement a 15-week abortion ban if the GOP was able to gain unified control over the state’s General Assembly. Instead, not only were Youngkin’s hopes of a Republican sweep dashed, but the Democrats now control both chambers.

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Hannity also groused that Republicans’ push to ban abortion in states across the country, as well as the reversal of the federal right to abortion, meant that “Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances.”

When Republicans keep saying things like “total abortion ban”, yeah, we get that impression.

edit: fucking Texas is trying to make it illegal to drive to get around their abortion ban

Don't mess with Texas, but we'll sure as fuck mess with you.

Sometimes I wish we could go back to when they were mainly known for open beverage containers, but it was pretty fucked then too.

Every time I see Texas in the news I say a little prayer for the man who my Greatx4 (5?) Grandfather, who definitely had some looser morals around things like murder and escaping prison twice, shot. If it weren't for their unfortunate ass, my family might still be in that awful place.

Yeah Ohio made a 10 year old go to fucking Indiana for an abortion. That’s part of why we legalized abortion

Not a violent person but I genuinely want to break things whenever I’m reminded of that. Just unbelievable from every direction, from people who preach about caring for children.

Republicans have never cared about children.

Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.

  • George Carlin

Classic stuff. He was so dead on accurate for then and now, and even he probably wouldn’t believe where things are today. We would get some epic rants.

edit: man, it’s hard to believe he’s been gone 15 years. The shit that’s happened since then.

edit2: I was just trying to work out how it’s possible it’s been only 15 years, then remembered that Trump’s presidency only took up 4 of them LOL

Unfortunately we still have a ways to go to protect our children from republicans. We need to ban all instances of underage marriage. I don’t give two shits if your parents are ok with it. Unless some evidence comes out that it’s actually beneficial for the child long term I don’t want to allow 16 year olds to get married.

In addition to that, most child marriages are young girls married to men twice their age.

Republicans are scaring women just fine on their own by making is less safe to be a woman

Fucking Texas made it so that someone that presents male, whom all of their classroom mates referred to as he, can't participate in a high school play as a male character.

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Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances

Oh hun, you don't need to blame Democrats for that. You're spreading that message quite clearly yourselves.

Yep. It turns out that a great many people don't fall for their bullshit gaslighting.

ETA: Also, I think everyone given a chance to interact with Klannity should always ask when he's going to be waterboarded.

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“Republicans need to look at all of these numbers, and really think about what’s more important. Yes, most people that are Republicans are probably pro-life,” she stated. “And we love our babies. And I love being a mother. But what’s most important? Republicans taking over. And Republicans being able to keep our country!”

Wasn't expecting them to say this part out loud.

Remember this when any future conservative (I don't care what party flag they're flying) tries to claim they are about any policy. If they ever attempt to come up with a policy again.

They've been getting vauger for decades intentionally.

Anti-abortion is going to become "childs rights" and they'll swear they'd never dream of outlawing abortion until they think they can get away with it.

Anti-abortion is going to become “childs rights”

No, probably not. That too easily leads to things they're against, like funding health care and education.

The “Vote NO on 1” signs littering the chuds’ yards in my neighborhood were subtitled with bullshit slogans like “protect children”, “protect parents’ rights” and, most egregiously, “protect them both” (complete with an illustration of a pregnant woman who is ostensibly in danger of being forced at gunpoint into an abortion?). [edit to add] I just read this morning that there were people putting out rumors that the amendment would allow minors to get gender reassignment surgery without parental consent, when all anyone needs to do is read the goddamn ballot, publicly available, to see that there is nothing there at all saying that. They’re craven liars.

Nothing is off the table for these psychopaths; for fuck’s sake, when they tried to block the measure from the ballot back in August, some of these jamokes had the gall to put up signs that said “protect the 2nd amendment”… but idiots will lap it up.

“Children’s Rights” can absolutely be their next tactic, because as long as they act in bad faith and say all kinds of shit with zero meaning behind it, why the hell not?

jamokes

Hunh. Genuine question: Is that a regional word, and if so what region?

Not regional as far as I know, I just picked it up a long time ago and recently reintroduced it into my vocabulary.

As if they’re averse to hypocrisy and double-think.

Mark my words - if the GOP manages to gain a 2/3 majority in the house and Senate through any form of shenanigans they will pass an amendment to relegalize slavery.

Don't disagree with your point, just want to note it's vaguer. The u is after the g to keep the g hard despite the e, and the e which is silent in vague is there to make the a long. Without the e it would be be vag, which ironically is pronounced with a soft g because of the i in vagina, even though it's been shortened.

When I was little, before kindygarten even, I would read books with my mom. One had the word “vague” in it, and I would pronounce it “vagh-you” because I didn’t know yet how to pronounce it. My mom would correct me, but I thought she meant that I was mispronouncing the vowel in the first syllable, and we’d go back and forth until I melted down because I was 4. It wasn’t until later on when I was actually in school that I got it because she never explained the concept of silent letters. Almost 40 years later, I’m still miffed about that.

Rofl Fuck them babies! Power above all else!

Their problem is that they've been making abortion a wedge issue for so long, that it's now impossible for them to back down. They've been catering to the religious right, pushing a message that life begins at conception and any form of abortion (and some birth control) is literally the same as murdering babies. And their base ate that shit up.

Now they're trying to backtrack, which leads to their hilarious message of basically "look, we're going to have to kill a few babies to get into power, because power is more important." Good luck trying to sell that.

They are literally sounding like sith lords...

So "killing babies" isn't okay as far as medical, financial/home stability concerns...

But it's ok if it's about winning elections...

They're being really blatant about it all of a sudden. Is this sort of statement effective on Republicans voters? Do they not have any sort of cognitive dissonance when hearing one of their beloved Fox and Friends anchors saying this?

My crazy prediction is the only lesson the GOP will take from this is that they have to try to steal elections even harder.

Keep voting at every legal opportunity you can people and great job yesterday!!

It's not enough to vote.

We need to be vigilant as we enter the presidential elections next year. Keep a close eye on secretaries of state or whomever certifies election results.

2020 was a test run for the Alt-right and they have learned where the weaknesses are in the democratic process. They will most certainly attempt to steal the 2024 election by any means necessary, up to and including violence.

They're still working on it:

Four county elections offices in Washington state were evacuated Wednesday after they received envelopes containing suspicious powders — including two that field-tested positive for fentanyl — while workers were processing ballots from Tuesday’s election. The elections offices were located in King County — home of Seattle — as well as Skagit, Spokane and Pierce counties, the Secretary of State’s Office said in emailed news release. Source

"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."

  • David Frum

So many things to fix in the US alone that would do the world some good and the only thing the GOP can agree to fix is elections. BIG SAD.

Vote in numbers too large to suppress.

And because of the day Election day falls on next year:

"Remember, remember, the 5th of November, The facist's treason and plot; for there is a reason why facists and treason should never be forgot"

(Someone better with words can probably improve this)

Plan to take election day off next year. Take a vacation day, if you're able, and if not, just plan not to show up to work. Stand in line. Get a camelbak or a big water bottle. But vote, because I'd rather start steering the right direction than crash into a wall.

“Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances.”

  • Sean Hannity

I think the GOP did that themselves last year in regards to the 10 year old girl who had to cross state lines into Indiana to get an abortion.

And don't forget the "life of the mother" exceptions in places like Texas that can only be triggered if the woman is actively dying. If she's not close enough to death, it is still "carry it to term or else."

Hey, but the doctor and all the medical staff could bet their medical licenses that the legal gray area would favor them in a particular case.

Of course it might be harder to practice medicine after the hospital execs consult with legal and fire your ass.

But hey, there's an off chance that legally you could get away with saving the life of the mother before death was imminent. Well, depending on the judge in Texas that day.

Of course it might be harder to practice medicine after the hospital execs consult with legal and fire your ass.

Its also going to be hard to practice medicine when a distraught husband pays a visit to your office to discuss why you let their wife die. It's Texas, too. So not only will a doctor have to get yelled at and threatened, he will be yelled at and threatened by the hysterically upset and armed man in his office who has nothing to lose.

Remember they were trying to push that moron Herschel Walker on people? That idiot straight up said that no exceptions were acceptable for abortion

I mean I could post the quotes of him supporting a no-exception national abortion ban and the quote of him saying that if he really paid for an abortion that there's no shame in that. But that's low hanging fruit. Instead, I'm just going for the fruit that already fell on the ground:

I’m this country boy. I’m not that smart.

  • Herschel Walker

And people say, ‘Herschel, you played football.’ But I said, ‘Guys, I also was valedictorian of my class. I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class in college.

  • Also Herschel Walker

So what we do is we’re going to put, from the ‘Green New Deal,’ millions or billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. So all of a sudden China and India ain’t putting nothing in there – cleaning that situation up. So all with that bad air, it’s still there. But since we don’t control the air, our good air decide to float over to China, bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we’ve got to clean that back up.

  • Herschel Walker again. This isn't a joke.

I have so many questions about the school he went to where he was in the top 1%.

He didn't even graduate. He wasn't smart when he entered UGA and after 2 decades of football, he has that football brain injury thing.

Jesus, that good air / bad air quote was hard to read. If I'm following him, and I might have too many braincells to do this correctly, he's arguing that we shouldn't have clean air because then someone else might benefit from our clean air? So we should just pollute the shit out of our air, because then at least the Chinese won't have a shot at getting any of our sweet, sweet clean air?

That's like saying you're not going to put indoor plumbing in your house, because your neighbor might not put indoor plumbing in their house. And if they're going to live up to their necks in shit, you'll be god-damned if you're not gonna live neck-deep in your own shit too! Otherwise, if you weren't absolutely drowning in your own shit, there's a chance that you might catch a whiff of your neighbor's shit, and ain't no way are you gonna let that happen.

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Pretty sure Hannity is one of the Faux News shows Indiana's AG was going on lying about it too

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So, I went to Faux News and looked at their front page. The very top headline is GOP Flips New York Seat Democrats Held for Decades, Causing 'Political Earthquake'.

This is followed by 29 more stories, including important stories like Couple's Viral 'Taylor Swift Jar' Has Wife Paying Whenever She Mentions the Star and Global Study Names the World's Booziest Nations - The Top Three Will Surprise You.

Finally, a full 30 stories down the front page, you eventually reach After Dismal Election Night, Republican Candidates Hammer Trump.

As an aside, it's cute how, when they want to celebrate and promote the feeling that their party is all one big happy family, they refer to themselves as "the GOP", but when they're trying to distance themselves from the party, suddenly it's "Republicans".

Anyway, well done, everyone!

We all remember that 10-year-old rape survivor in Ohio and the repugs who demanded she give birth to her rapist's baby.

I'm just going to point out that, in a bunch of states, if you give birth to your rapist's baby, the rapist can get parental visitation rights.

They're just trying to make America great again: the good old days where if you wanted a woman you could just rape her and she'd have to marry you to avoid the social shame!

Jesus Christ was a rape baby.

Anything they can do to bring on Judgement Day.

Maybe instead of worrying about gaining power through whatever means necessary they actually try doing what their constituents want?

They don't have a party they have a coup in search of a country.

They don't have a party they have a coup in search of a country.

Brilliant

That's the thing. Republican politicians have a corporate mentality. They pretend to care about the customers, but their true allegiance is to the shareholders. And that mentality has worked surprisingly well for them for decades. Pretend to care just enough about social issues, but don't do anything too controversial, all the while enacting legislation that disproportionately assists the 1%. They had a good thing going.

But they kept wanting more. They kept going back to the social policy well to get more voters because they weren't getting enough buy-in on their fiscal policies. Now you've got more elected politicians willing to push unpopular social policy when just ten to fifteen years ago they knew better for the most part. This new batch of Republicans actually intend to enact their regressive policies when previously they were content with merely stymieing progress and loudly complaining.

Now that they've reached a critical mass of people who don't know better or don't care, they have started enacting deeply unpopular policies. They don't know our care how unpopular they are because they can't imagine anything outside of their echo chambers. They're listening to the loudest 10 people in the room while ignoring the quiet 200 who will only speak at the voting booth. And voters have finally had enough. They may not love what the democrats are doing, they may even think that the democrats are doing a terrible job, but they absolutely hate what the republicans are doing even more. I'm betting that a large number of apathetic voters are starting to show up.

So republicans resort to every trick in the book to silence the majority who disagrees with them. Gerrymandering, purging voter rolls right before an election, closing poling places and limiting hours, restricting absentee voting, holding special elections during times when voter turnout has historically been very low, enacting voter ID laws... Every single trick they can think of so that only their voices count. And that still isn't enough.

They're doing what the people who voted put them there to do. The only problem is that those people apparently don't actually represent the majority, and republicans absolutely refuse to accept that.

Pretend to care just enough about social issues, but don’t do anything too controversial, all the while enacting legislation that disproportionately assists the 1%. They had a good thing going.

Yeah, overturning Roe was the dog that caught the car. Now that they don't have their main boogeyman drum (women everywhere aborting all the babies all of the time won't someone think of the children!) to bang on they've got nothing. Savvy grifters like Turtle Interrupted never wanted to actually succeed in passing that kind of extremist legislation, but now the GOP balance has shifted too far down the scale of "pretending to be crazy in order to steal money vs being actually crazy".

The problem is they are doing what their constituents want, they just don't have enough of them to get them the power they want because they are evil bastards.

they are doing what their constituents want

It's worth noting that their constituents are an amalgam of fringe theocratic radicals and check-writing plutocrats. The whole reason Fox exists is that they realized long ago that their policy programs aren't popular, they instead needed to add circuses to the bread and circuses to be relevant in any way

Hannity: "Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don't want abortion legal under any circumstances."

Nah, you guys are doing just fine on that without any help at all.

While the other cable news networks stuck with live special coverage for the rest of the evening, Fox News decided that its audience needed a break from the deflating electoral results for conservatives. After Hannity signed off at 10 p.m., Fox aired its regularly scheduled broadcast of “comedy” show Gutfeld!, which was pre-taped and didn’t make any mention of the elections.

Gotta protect their snowflakes from any hint of reality until they can figure out how to spin it properly.

Nah, you guys are doing just fine on that without any help at all.

"Damn, those democrats shat my pants again!"

Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances

if your opposition's propaganda consists solely of unedited video clips of you speaking, it's not propaganda

It's so hilarious to see these people still acting like the dog that caught the car.

The forced birthers, oops, I mean, "pro lifers" need to shut up for a little while and repeat this mantra in their heads, over and over until it fucking sinks in: "Roe [*] WAS the compromise. Roe WAS the compromise".

[*] The thing they worked for decades to destroy.

Nah, I'm fine with them continuing to announce their anti-abortion views. Politically it costs then elections, and in real life it helps identify the idiots.

While 10yo rape victims suffer...

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

You rightoid fuckers HAVE NO POLICIES outside of schadenfreude and bogeyman flavor of the month fearmongering. Conservatives are incapable of governance, and a lot more people are finally catching on.

Oh and tax cuts for billionaires.

While not improving any efficiencies and therefore skyrocketing debt

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In my opinion PotatoTown Tuberville and the rest of the GOP who don't override the filibuster want to leave these positions open so they can stuff them with Christian Nationalists if they take the Senate next year.

They don't intend to let the next coup fail.

You rightoid fuckers HAVE NO POLICIES outside of schadenfreude and bogeyman flavor of the month fearmongering.

That's not true: they have hatred of minorities and women.

I still don't think that the full impact of COVID is being accounted for in polling and voter outcomes. Yes the first wave hit blue areas hard and fast due to population density but with the vaccine and the ever growing amount of time it has been available I have to imagine it is almost exclusively hitting red areas now. COVID has not gone away but vaccinated people aren't dying at nearly the rate of the unvaccinated of which that group is pretty exclusively GOP or at least Maga. When some of these elections were coming down to the thousands of voters 3 years ago what happens when thousands of dedicated GOP voters are now dead?

I did the math a few years ago because I couldn't find anyone else who had published it. This is rough and IANAM (mathmagicman).

Every single day 8,000 boomers and above die, and 12,000 people turn 18 and those numbers are actually accelerating. If you use existing data to estimate conservative/liberal and likely voters within those groups it works out to a delta of 10,000 per day on a national scale. That's 5,000 votes switching every single day. That might not seem like alot. Because it really isn't. Out of 155 million votes cast, 10,000 is .006 percent. But here's the thing. It's cumulative. And it just doesn't stop. It is relentless. it's 300k a month, 3.6 million per year. And that pace is accelerating. Between 2020 and 2024 it's a 15 million vote difference. By 2028 it's 30 million. It used to be that people age into conservatism. But that is not happening with millennials. The demographics are changing, and changing quickly. The most conservative group in the country is dying. While the most liberal group is rising.

We just have to hold on to democracy for a few more years. This will all be behind us. Another 10k today.

I have a feeling you "aged in to conservatism" because that's when you finally had money and humans are generally shit when it comes to "fuck you I got mine" but speaking as a millennial, that's just not happening. My generation's retirement plan is to die at our desks hopefully in a way that creates a lot of work for our bosses. Although on the less cynical side of things, I also tend to think that generally people are becoming more tolerant over time.

For the most part I have aged into liberalism. Older I get and the more shit I have seen.

Before: What do you mean institutional racism is a thing? I am not racist, no one I know is racist. Oh sure there are skinheads, but they are in jail. Since I don't see it, it must not be there.

Now: I just saw my friend who is black get treated like he was a dangerous criminal because of the crime of walking.

Stuff like that for example. I am doing well, I got mine. I want everyone else to get there's as well.

aged into liberalism

Elder millennial here. Same. Grew up in a conservative, religious house hold, thinking we were some kind of bastion of morality, while the blue team was dead set on blending babies down into a paste for their satanic rituals n' shit. Started actually paying attention to politics in the Clinton presidency, but ofc was hyper-focused on shit that doesn't matter (relative to actual policy, anyway) like his affair, so cue the confirmation bias.

Then Bush happened, but by then I was actually thinking critically, so there was a lot of "wtf, I know he's on our team, but this isn't right". I was still a fucking idiot though, so I landed in the "bOtH siDeS arE teH sAMe!!" trap and championed the Libertarian party for a bit.

Eventually realized the LP, despite having some sincerely decent concepts on paper (shoutout to the non-aggression principle), boiled down to just handing corporations the reigns of the nation; and that the notion of the free market policing itself is a laughable pipe dream (reality check for pretty much any Libertarian proposal: "What would telecoms do with this proposed power?").

And I couldn't support the blue team because... um... well there was the situation with Clinton's blowjob... and, uh... hmmmm... why the fuck have I been vilifying them all this time?! FINALLY took a closer look at the real left's goals, and not just Fox's boogeyman fantasy version, and FINALLY realized I'd been drinking the right's kool-aid from basically birth all the way through the Libertarian phase.

Fast forward another decade-ish and 2016 happened, which really pulled off the last shred of veneer that used to present the GOP as anything other than seething hateful cultists: that was the kick in the ass that made me realize that I've got some catching up to do, and urgently. Haven't missed an election since, big or small: solid blue.

The really important bit here: none of ^that is unique. It took some blundering in the dark to realize that I was... well, blundering in the dark; but I was raised alongside a horde of other kids whose parents "shifted right as they aged" and just didn't question the boogeyman fantasy shit until we got out of the house, and then turned left. Then more left. Then ALL THE WAY LEFT.

And it's not just in blue bubbles, either - I was active duty in the military when we switched from Obama to Trump; the military definitely leans right, but it's not absolute as it's often presented. Even there, a significant portion of the servicemen and women I interacted with were on track wit their own version of my rant here. People in general, but millennial and younger especially, are REALLY sick of this neonazi, christofascist shit on the red team.

It's kind of amazing how much the military still leans right after all the Trump shit.

The draft dodging, the incredible disrespect for the military, the obscene bullshit like the hurricane marker incident, the dictator worship, the subservience to Putin, and of course the coup. I would think military people would be better at recognizing incompetence at least.

A couple redditers put together a list of links to articles highlighting each of Trump's attacks on our own military, from policy to just disrespectful shit like his "I lIkE pEopLe wHo wErn'T cApTUrEd."

Ignoring the shit he did against every other slice of our nation, and JUST focusing on things that hurt the military/vets, there had to be around a hundred links.

I definitely converted a few people with that list.

But yeah, the right's kool-aid is a potent drug - it's easy to just keep chugging without question.

Do you still have the link to that post?

No, the original got deleted. Looks like there have been a few attempts to recreate it though: found one that looks decent, but reddit's being fucky with the comments actually showing up in the thread they were posted - it's a 3 part post and only one shows up, but if you look at the user's comment history you can see them all back to back. This link should bring you to the correct page, ctrl+F "PT 3 -.-" to jump to it. It's reverse chronological, so the the pt 3 is the last, with the 2nd and 1st appearing under it.

Infact, fuggit, I hate directing traffic to reddit, and I've got the pages open now. Gimme a min and I'll just get the list + links over as a post here.

Edit - Here ya go:

https://lemmy.world/post/8041636

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the notion of the free market policing itself is a laughable pipe dream (reality check for pretty much any Libertarian proposal: “What would telecoms do with this proposed power?”)

Ah, the good old tango of

"Yeah, sure, we could do That Thing with the proposed powers, but we'd NEVER EVER do That Thing, we're not evil after all. We just ABSOLUTELY NEED the capability to do That Thing right now. K, thanks.

Whoops, we did That Thing."

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I remember Gen X saying much the same thing about their retirement plans, too, though.

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Regarding the steadfast belief that "conservatism is dying": no it isn't. Christian schools, home schools, Christian colleges, and even regular schools, communities and colleges are pumping out kids that have the beliefs of their parents. I live in a rural area, and work (hypocritically) for a Christian based organization. I'm surrounded by young minds that are perfectly comfortable with the ideals of the religious right, and vote.

Society has been saying it for years... We said it when I was back in college. "Bubba in the white house is going to be the best! We'll undo all the hell Reagan and Bush did!" then Newt Gingrich (sounds like a disease...) made his "Promise to America(tm)" and everything got fucked.

I will say that the trend, year over year, for xtians has been they have been going down at roughly 1% per year, every year, for many years now. I think it is things like this that explain why the cons are getting increasingly radicalized in their positions and in their tactics. They have been denigrating the notion of democratic norms (the well-actually "this is not a democratic country" stuff that they love to pull, for instance). Their more wonky members starting laying the groundwork way, way back, according to McLean's Democracy In Chains.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/

I mean, the fact that about 1 in 3 is unaffiliated is quite staggering. I can remember a time where even admitting this was seen as rather "edgy", now it's going to earn a shrug.

This is why they want religious schools, school vouchers, private schools, etc. It's segregation light. This way they stay in their echo chamber.

But the data shows religiousness is going down. The ones that remain are becoming more radical.

This is also why they want Fox, to appeal to more than the religious.

People have been saying that conservatism is aging out since at least the 90's. Instead we see resurgences throughout the years.

Some people have been saying that the current resurgence is more of a death throe. I truly hope so, but I'm worried.

It used to be that people age into conservatism

It used to be that being conservative did not require you being batshit insane.

Yes batshit insane conservatives existed, but so did reasonable people supporting reasonable sounding policies by conservative politicians who behaved in a respectable manner.

While I believe it's still possible for reasonable people to be Conservative, it's not possible for reasonable people to support Republicans with their mouth pieces like Magorie "Jewish Space Lasers" Green being treated like someone with opinions worth listening to.

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You need to keep in mind that 2023 COVID is a different beast than 2020 COVID. The currently most common strains tend to be less hard on the body as the virus has started to adapt to human hosts.

I still wouldn't recommend people to go unvaccinated but it's not quite as suicidally irresponsible as it used to be. Still irresponsible, though.

Yeah, but the elderly GOP base is getting it for the 2nd or 3rd time without having been vaccinated. It's just as hard on them if not harder.

That said I don't think it's moving the needle as much as MAGA politics are.

What bizarro world do you live in? It's no longer a novel virus. Most boomers have been exposed or infected by COVID, also a great number (majority) of them got vaccinated. So by now there are miniscule number of boomers without natural or vaccine immunity. The vaccines boosters do little here in terms of death, because very few boomers are currently dying from COVID.

Hospitalization rate of over 65 was

16.4 per 100,000 during the week ending August 26 2023

Death rate is a fraction of that.

Everyone I know who was vaxxed and boosted told me it felt between a cold and the flu. Which granted not fun, but considering the alternative much better.

And it's a hell of a lot better than long Covid, especially before we knew more about what the duck long Covid was going to look like.

You can still get long COVID even after being vaccinated (at least that's what I've read) but it's much less likely

Shhhh if we don't talk about it they'll never figure it out

We’ve been talking about this since COVID hit. They’re too fucking stupid to accept the truth.

I remember how the cons were cynically thinking it was going to hit the "urban" people harder and the worst among them were cheering that on. Whooooops.

They’re always thinking that the world is more dumb than they are and hilariously never coming to the realization that it’s because they're so dumb that they think that.

It also was and still is most fatal for older people, who generally lean more towards the Republican side.

I think there are also a couple more factors. In a time when early detection and treatment gets the best outcomes, the right-wingers are more likely to believe that it isn't serious, so they're less likely to test and less likely to try to get paxlovid (or be outside the 5-day grace period).

And even if they know they're sick early and want to get paxlovid, people who live in rural areas have less access to healthcare in general - and some of their doctors may not believe in paxlovid. Which really sucks for those people.

All that said, the are definitely health care discrepancies for minorities, and those disproportionately affect Democrats (mostly).

Um polling is on the current population. Unless there's a long, long pause between the poll and the vote it really won't matter much.

Polling is on the current population of people who are willing to answer polls. If the poll is done by blind calling people what are the odds you would even answer the phone?

And people are less willing to give out data to an unknown entity than ever before.

Previously you'd answer surveys because you wanted to be represented. Now you don't answer surveys because you know it may just be used to target advertisements or messaging for your opponents.

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To offer my trivial little analysis:

The GOP has happily made themselves into the Trumpism party even in elections where Trump isn't even running.

Those hard core Trump supporters are only interested in Trump himself (just like Trump is only interested in himself), and aren't as likely to bother if he isn't personally involved. To all but the Trump die hards, Trump is odious and that stink has rubbed off to make his detractors very active to fight the GOP at large.

I fear that next year Trump will bolster GOP votes with his fanatics.

Fuck the republican traitor filth. Fucking worthless parasites.

Anyone voting republican, especially after Jan 6th, directly opposes democracy. If large scale organized violence aginst elections isn't a breaking point for you, then I don't/won't/can't trust you.

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While the other cable news networks stuck with live special coverage for the rest of the evening, Fox News decided that its audience needed a break from the deflating electoral results for conservatives. After Hannity signed off at 10 p.m., Fox aired its regularly scheduled broadcast of “comedy” show Gutfeld!, which was pre-taped and didn’t make any mention of the elections.

Gutfeld acting as a conservative american "swan lake" might be the saddest thing I've heard all day.

I just want to point out that, nationwide, moms for liberty candidates lost 92% of the elections they were involved in. America HATES MAGA

Thank fucking God. They are the worst.

Their platform is literally "ban all the books that might make you, ya know, think"

Kayleigh McEnany actually seemed to correctly diagnose the problem. I was shocked. And then she started in on her solution:

Tomorrow, I want the House of Representatives passing legislation for men to pay women child support from the moment of conception, legislation to make the child tax credit apply to the unborn

Her solution to the vast majority of Americans rejecting GOP 'fetal personhood' extremism is to... go right back to trying to shove fetal personhood in through a back door. They really do think everyone else is even dumber than they are.

Her idea to increase SNAP funds for young mothers and add child support for pregnant women isn't that bad. The funny thing is, Republicans will never go for it. They're not a party of policies, they're a party that proposes "gotcha" bills that mock government and tax cuts.

There's no way Republicans will support any of her ideas. It's funny that someone on Fox News doesn't understand that.

The idea of creating pregnancy support and a tax credit for pregnant women is fine. The idea of expanding child support and the child tax credit to pregnant women is all about expanding the legal definition of "child" to include fetuses.

Calling a fetus a child makes as much sense as calling a bee a fish. Incidentally, bees are known to the state of California to be a type of fish (for the purpose of California's endangered species act).

It is easier to expand an existing program than it is to create a new one.

They really do think everyone else is even dumber than they are.

The one thing I agree with GOP on.

it was time for the GOP to learn to love abortion.

That might be pushing it, but they can learn to get over and deal with it.

Nobody is forcing any Republicans to have abortions, so maybe them and their small government asses can mind their own fucking business in regards to everyone else.

learn to get over and deal with it.

As soon as one Republican does this, ten more screech about having a federal ban. They are irreversibly fucked and I am here to see every moment of it.

Maybd an american can explain the abortion bans: Does 15 week ban mean no abortion after 15 weeks? That sounds reasonable. I thought the bans mean no abortions at all. In germany its no abortion after 12 weeks unless there is serious risk for the mother or the fetus is not viable.

Not an American, but from what I have heard, that along with the outright ban at 15 weeks, they also often include other inhumane things.

Making the woman listen to the fetus's heartbeat. Forced waiting periods. Parental consent required for minors. Forced counseling. Etc.

Also, medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds and doctors forced to read scripted lies to scared patients. (just thought I'd fill in some of the etc.)

Also, pregnancy is declared to have begun basically four weeks before the last missed period. So a 15 week ban is really an 11 week ban. And you only get 11 weeks if you are regular and are keeping track.

Now keeping track, in some states, is becoming a legal liability. So these antiabortion measures are just going to cause more oopies. It's just evil for the sake of being controlling.

Yep, it's not about saving unborn fetuses, it's about controlling woman

And about gaining power in general. The Ainsley Earhardt quote in the article is very telling.

“Republicans need to look at all of these numbers, and really think about what’s more important. Yes, most people that are Republicans are probably pro-life,” she stated. “And we love our babies. And I love being a mother. But what’s most important? Republicans taking over. And Republicans being able to keep our country!

She is flat out stating that they should drop the anti-abortion stance if it means gaining and keeping power. Abortion is, and has always been, nothing more than a tool the GOP uses to win elections and now that the tool is ceasing to be useful, they should discard it.

Part of the issue in the US is that the exceptions in these laws are made purposely vague to make it too risky for doctors to be able to help pregnant women unless they are literally about to die. Not familiar enough with the reasonableness of different week limits for abortion but the main way it's framed here is that it's mostly an issue between a woman and her doctor and not the business of politicians

Good video from John Oliver on this topic which just aired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eH2BItdo0M

The reason it's not reasonable is based on how we age pregnancy. The counter starts at the last day of your last menstrual cycle. That means the gestational age of the egg might be two days but you're already 4 weeks pregnant. On top of that a lot of diagnostic tests cannot be performed that early. My wife needed an amniocentesis due to possible congenital birth defects but by the time we had the initial screening, then the diagnostic test, we were at 16 weeks. Add onto that after a test like that the decision has to be made wether to terminate a pregnancy then the procedure has to be scheduled and performed. All in all you're looking at 20 weeks or so.

A 15 week ban might as well be a total ban.

Does 15 week ban mean no abortion after 15 weeks? That sounds reasonable.

It isn't, though: It's forcing birth on someone who doesn't want it, and probably forcing a child into a bad home.

The vast majority, ~96%, of abortions take place at 15 weeks or earlier. That said, conservatives in America have spent the last 50 years arguing that each individual state should decide how to handle the abortion issue themselves. Now that Roe has been overturned, they've immediately pivoted to pushing a federal ban, proving once again that there are no core principles in modern American conservatism.