[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has warned that the GOP could resort to scandalous measures to avoid losing control of Congress following the midterms.

[...] Republicans in the House and Senate might simply refuse to swear in newly elected members if it meant losing control of either chamber of Congress.

[...] Politics War Room co-host Al Hunt agreed that such fears are justified and urged Democrats to seek the "best legal advice" they can to fight any GOP attempts to cling to power because "there's nothing that they won't do."

"Yeah, I concur, and also just send as many early warning things as you can," Carville replied. [...] "You cannot talk about it enough. It's too dangerous, and they're going to try. You have to have not just good lawyers. You have to have good preparation. You've got to be ready to go when it happens, to stoke what I think would be huge outrage in this country," Carville said.

"This is a lot harder to do than we think. I'm not saying they're not going to try, but I think it's going to be very hard for them to do, very hard, particularly when you're forewarned."

Carville Makes Chilling Prediction About MAGA Power Grab Plot - The Daily Beast

Is it really that hard if Trump just ignores the Supreme Court? In the past presidential abuses were met with the threat of mass resignations that would have compromised the executive branch's ability to function. But the Trump administration has been very busy trying to make sure that the executive branch is staffed with people who will remain loyal to Trump, at least to keep their jobs (and/or gain more power).

On the bright side, if the Trump administration has to rely heavily on AI and robotics after a series of mass resignations, it should make it easier for superintelligence to seize control of the United States from our tyrannical avatar of super-duper stupidity.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 July 2026 - 01:14 PM

[Cause]

Well Mitch is alive, says it was just pneumonia and fall. Bullshit. You don’t get to disappear for weeks as a senator and say it was just pneumonia and a fall. Unless you couldn’t talk because of a death, coma, ventilator there’s no excuse for such an absence and even in such an absence your family/staff have an obligation to explain.

The man would have lost his food stamp benefits under his party’s own legislation regarding work ethic.

[QuickTidal]

I'm not sure if I'm willing to believe he's alive, but I know for DAMNED sure that even if he is that photo was doctored as hell. No way they do CPR for a fall, and no way he looks better than he did a decade ago.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 13 July 2026 - 05:43 PM, said:

Well Mitch is alive, says it was just pneumonia and fall. Bullshit. You don't get to disappear for weeks as a senator and say it was just pneumonia and a fall. Unless you couldn't talk because of a death, coma, ventilator there's no excuse for such an absence and even in such an absence your family/staff have an obligation to explain.

The man would have lost his food stamp benefits under his party's own legislation regarding work ethic.

I generally support paying Republican Senators not to vote.

Though of course it depends on what they plan on voting for. (Demon turtle almost grew a bit of a back bone in dealing with Trump---I could even imagine him voting to convict and remove, at least if he wasn't planning on running for reelection.) But most of the time...

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 July 2026 - 06:37 PM

[Illuyankas]

Carville is the last person they should be listening to, literally every piece of advice he's given since Clinton has been wrong and terrible - he's the one who told the Harris campaign to stop calling Republicans weird and to take the spotlight off Walz, which was about a third of why it crashed and burned

[Cause]

Well one judge must have missed the message all the others get and she made an important decision in a very timely manner to actually matter.

The Anti-weaponization fund that was cooked up by Trump and Todd Blanche as acting as head of the DOJ as a settlement with the Treasury department was first announced on May 18th. It’s only July 13th and already a judge has found that the whole thing was corrupt, the original lawsuit was brought in bad faith as a fraud against the court, that Todd Blanch should go before the Barr for sanctions.

Actually in time for it to derail Todd Blanches nomination. Incredible.

This post has been edited by Cause: 13 July 2026 - 11:14 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Illuyankas, on 13 July 2026 - 09:30 PM, said:

Carville is the last person they should be listening to, literally every piece of advice he's given since Clinton has been wrong and terrible - he's the one who told the Harris campaign to stop calling Republicans weird and to take the spotlight off Walz, which was about a third of why it crashed and burned

While you may have intended that as hyperbole, there are clear counterexamples.

Polling data and turnout data strongly support his claim that the "defund the police" slogan would negatively impact Democrats in the 2020 elections.

The Electoral Demise of Defund the Police - The Washington Post

https://www.thirdway...on-analysis.pdf

He correctly predicted Democrats would do better than anticipated in 2022, and that the predicted "red wave" was overblown.

And that abortion would become a much bigger (and more motivating) electoral issue for Democrats after Dobbs (in 2022).

Most relevantly for 2024, he predicted that inflation and cost-of-living concerns would dominate, and that is strongly backed up by polling data.

In contrast, the evidence that backing away from the term "weird" hurt Harris's campaign seems to be based solely on social media engagement, anecdotal experience, and personal opinion. As for deemphasizing Walz's role---while he did have a higher net favorability rating than Harris, he had a lower positive favorability rating (42 for Walz vs 44 for Harris, with Walz being substantially less popular among Black voters and women voters), and there doesn't seem to be any data suggesting that deemphasizing Walz's role led to a negative overall effect on Harris's campaign. Personally, as a Pennsylvanian familiar with rural central Pennsylvania, the Republican-leaning suburbs, and Philadelphia, the use of "weird" as an unqualified pejorative seemed like a clear negative to me, and while Walz may come across well in rural areas, trying to win away many rural Trump voters with the likes of Walz was a losing proposition.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 14 July 2026 - 05:58 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Trump continues to come up with brilliant plans to lower prices before the midterms:

Quote

Trump Says He'll Seek to Replace Immigrant Truck Drivers With Veterans

The president has pushed to curtail the commercial licenses of immigrants, including legal residents, whom he has blamed for crashes.

[...] Trump said on Wednesday that his administration was cracking down on unauthorized immigrant truck drivers [...] Trump has blamed semi-truck crashes on immigrant drivers, though no comprehensive studies have been conducted on how many collisions involve them. On Wednesday, he repeated claims that many such drivers cannot read road signs and abuse drugs.

Trump Says He'll Seek to Replace Immigrant Truck Drivers With Veterans - The New York Times

Oh I know, he's going to appeal to voters with... a good old-fashioned auto-coup.

Is it easier to run over ICE if you're driving a big truck? Well, at least in theory, you could run over ICE agents more efficiently...