lol 30 miles. (Grew up in a small town where it was about 90 miles to anything interesting).
Waiting anxiously for the TR!
But it’s still delicious. Talking about winning a battle but losing the war.
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My friend is planning to get in line at 12:45. 
Yes, you’re crazy.
It’s like 2016 never happened. There is still misogyny. There is still racism.
We’re both going to be crushed on election day, but at least I will have been expecting it.
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FFS, man.
How many SSCs do we even have here?
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This guy gets it.
Yeah I mean I’m not insanely confident at all but the range of outcomes has shifted massively in our direction since a few weeks ago.
Under Biden, it looked like the best possible scenarios were nail-biter victories that would only happen if all the polls were wrong, and the worst were humiliating electoral maps where we lose VA and MN and a few other states along with all the swing states.
Now, it looks like our floor is something similar to 2016 where things break closely for Trump in all the wrong states (and we’re definitely drawing very live to this), and our ceiling is maybe not as amazing as eyebooger’s map, but maybe something like an Obama 2012 beatdown. That window of possibilities is gonna continue to shift around, and maybe it swings most of the way back to where we were post-debate with Biden…but that seems less likely every day.
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I said it’s on the table, not that it’s super-likely.
I would not have said this was remotely on the table 3 weeks ago.
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Ohio? Texas? LOL. It’s not even on the table.
I’ll eat my hat if Kamala wins Ohio, that’s bonkers.
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Especially with an Ohio Senator on the ticket. I do think we’re drawing live to Trump continuing to tilt and go on meltdowns where he could possibly do things to lose more support, but his floor is too high to lose those states unless he does something to turn off his base
The debate was earlier than ever, and I recall some discussion before the debate that if Biden bombed hard he could be replaced. It was sort of a “why else would it be this early?” discussion.
I’m not worried about 2016. Trump ran against an opponent that people really didn’t like (for whatever reason) and barely won. In 2020 his opponent was only a little more likable but people were tired of Trump. He’s even more cooked in 2024. I know literally zero normies who are sticking with Trump and I know many who lean Republican.
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I don’t think it’s likely at all but given how much the Trump excitement involved owning the libs/etc if we got to a point where it looked pretty certain to everyone that Harris was going to win the swing states making Trump look like a feeble loser I could see a snowball effect where MAGA stays home somewhere like Ohio. Again not saying this likely certainly more possible than with Biden
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Who was it who got 20:1 odds on Trump applying “Sloppy Steve” to Bannon, and then Trump came through? Because that’s my favorite.
Those were West Wing fantasy takes. They were paired with discussion about how it would go down and who the best replacement would be and Harris was never in the discussion. The reality of the situation is it would only ever be Harris and the only mechanism for change would be Biden voluntarily withdrawing. The odds of both everything going down as they did and the replacement being met with a historic level of good vibes is just so slim if Trump could run it again it would still be correct to thoroughly destroy Biden.
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If Biden had done even slightly better at the debate, we’d be turbofucked, you’re right.
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I totally disagree on this. I don’t think it’s fair to say they were West Wing fantasy takes when Biden being replaced actually happened. That we were perhaps wrong about Kamala being the best replacement (still think Gretch or Shapiro at the top would have been better, but in hindsight a lot less realistic) doesn’t make the whole thing a West Wing fantasy. It’s also pretty clear that prominent people in the party were at least considering some sort of open speed primary with delegates deciding.
As for the only mechanism being Biden voluntarily withdrawing, well, yes - to the extent that he voluntarily withdrew as it played out. Like he did so, but only once it was made abundantly clear to him that he did not have the support of other party leaders, Congressional Dems, etc. That was always the mechanism for forcing him out.
Lastly, regardless of the slim odds, Trump would be better off waiting to have the debate until early September to get Biden locked in and then beat him so badly that he was drawing dead. 99% is better than 95% or whatever.
I’m also not so sure about this. Let’s think it through. Let’s say Biden did, not even slightly better, but quite a bit better… but still not good enough to have Dems kind of freaking out and saying he couldn’t get the job done. The response among the party would be to call for interviews, appearances, etc, right?
If he didn’t give those, it would have made it obvious to party operatives and politics junkies alike that his people knew he wasn’t up for it. Maybe it plays out similarly, or maybe he survives it, but I think there’s a chance that would have taken him down anyway.
Essentially, to people who follow politics closely, the response to the debate criticism from his team was almost as damning as the debate performance itself - and yeah, that’s really saying something. But the half-assed response made it obvious that the people closest to him knew he wasn’t up for it.
Hopium take: listen to this shit, he’s so cooked. At least some people voted for him in 2016 because he promised solutions to problems, he can’t do that anymore, his entire path to victory is hoping the number of people who will vote based on hating immigrants alone has grown since 2016 (or even 2020) to win 270 EVs on its own.
The entire word salad screams I’m rich, detached from reality, and have no idea how anything works.