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[JoshuaFH]

As much of a bunch of rat bastards they are, Republicans do a very good job keeping their core constituency engaged, consolidated into a nice gang, well-informed of the most recent things to hate, and whipped into a frenzy. Comparatively, democrats seemingly couldn't give less of a fuck about pushing their constituents into direct action or involvement, preferring to keep their rhetoric very tepid and unappealing, so even sympathetic left leaning voters will find it difficult to get up and actually endorse their own party. If anything, it's not that there's a democratic party, but an Anti-Republican party, that ostensibly doesn't stand for the things that Republicans do, but also doesn't really stand for anything itself.

Of course, the party system is a sham, both sides are working together to strangle democracy, while distracting everyone with the nice play they put on where they pretend to be adversaries.

Which, of course, is a double sham, because every actor in that play has their balls in a vice by big business, who bully them around like the little chodes they are as they really run the show.

[Max™]

You got shit backwards.

Democrats actually value rights and democratic processes, they actually point out that they're trying to preserve freedoms and rights and society.

Republicans have no values beyond "Trump good, brown people bad" these days.

Arguably those are the same value, the orange cunt was only elected because the piece of shit openly campaigned around not giving a fuck for anyone who wasn't white.

Previously the only thing the vile fascist sucking pieces of shit agreed on was "DEMOCRATS IS DA DEBIL N R GUNNA TAK UR GUNZ N JEEBUS LUVZ GUNZ!"

[hector13]

Also abortion, because allowing women bodily autonomy is obviously terrible.

[Micro102]

Some democrats believe in democracy and rights. But remember, the democrat party is made up of everyone "not republican". Which of course includes people juuuust left of fascist. And that includes plenty of conservatives. People that would have been considered republicans 30 years ago. Also, grifters like Gabbard.

[McTraveller]

Perhaps both abuses of reproductive bodily autonomy and abortion are terrible things?

We've got reactions on both extremes, too: the easily-abused restrictive laws proposed (or coming into effect) in some states, and some ridiculously open proposals in some states, allowing abortion including very late term "for any reason."

It's one of those aspects of society which is just terrible regardless.

On less controversial notes - I heard yesterday that some people are claiming that the power company is "letting us have frequent power outages in wind storms so they can force 'the green agenda' of wind and solar on us."  I don't even know how some people manage the daily aspects of living...

[Frumple]

We've got reactions on both extremes, too: the easily-abused restrictive laws proposed (or coming into effect) in some states, and some ridiculously open proposals in some states, allowing abortion including very late term "for any reason."

The reason for that is because if you put restrictions on it, basically any at all, you're going to have massive attempts to abuse that to attack women -- it's similar to why life of the mother exceptions in an otherwise blanket ban function as a de-facto total ban, due to anti-women fuckers persistently filing suit even in cases that were blatantly deadly for the pregnant woman. The chilling effect that has on the procedure even when it is life saving is very real and at times outright deadly, as doctors push things right to the wire in order to attempt to avoid liability and criminal charges, with all the increase in complications that implies. The problem with abortion bans like that is that they're only even a smidgen of approaching reasonable if everyone involved in the non-medical side of things is operating in good faith, and anti-abortion fuckers have made it incredibly, wildly, clear that they are not operating in good faith even in the least little bit.

The reality of it is that late-term abortions for reasons that aren't massive medical danger of one sort or another are functionally nonexistent. They just don't happen, women do not carry a child to late term and then abort on a lark. Legislating like they're a substantial issue that needs addressing, especially nearly to the degree abortion access in general is a concern, is operating on a fundamentally disingenuous basis. An abuse like that would be a terrible thing, but it basically doesn't fucking happen.

[hector13]

The rate of abortion between places where it’s legal and illegal is basically the same (though the model used is guesswork in some places), and most abortions (almost 99%) happen before 21 weeks in the US.

Further, shit like this, where a woman’s pregnancy is unviable but the foetus still has a heartbeat, becomes prevalent when abortion is illegal or has other caveats, because doctors refuse to perform the medically necessary procedure for fear of prosecution.

Edit: forgot about this article about late-term abortions also, which was interesting.

[Dostoevsky]

On less controversial notes - I heard yesterday that some people are claiming that the power company is "letting us have frequent power outages in wind storms so they can force 'the green agenda' of wind and solar on us."  I don't even know how some people manage the daily aspects of living...

If there's one thing power companies love, it's making people unable to buy their product. Dastards I say, dastards.

[Great Order]

That's somewhere in the realm of "I'll buy this product then record me smashing it to pieces to show those companies I don't support them!" in terms of intelligence.

[Loud Whispers]

That's somewhere in the realm of "I'll buy this product then record me smashing it to pieces to show those companies I don't support them!" in terms of intelligence.

The Ai Wei Wei approach I see

[None]

I'm not really surprised- the old drunks in townie bars out in bumfuck, nowhere seem to think that all that wind turbines do is explode, that all electric vehicles do is explode, and figures all that power for EV comes from coal anyways so why bother (never minding economies of scale with respect to transporting fossil fuels, capacity to generate power exceeding what can be done in an individual's car, net carbon footprint, the ability to even utilize green energy, etc.

I mean, my gasoline-burning car explodes a LOT every time I use it. Like, magnitudes more than any given wind turbine or electric car. Strictly speaking, if stuff exploding is bad, then we've got to swap over to electric cars, right?

I should've asked him what his opinion of mass transit is- he probably still figures trains are coal and steam powered.

[Dostoevsky]

Despite my joke I feel I should mention that, given the extremely weird way the utility system works in the US / most states, there are some potential perverse incentives at play. It arguably takes some of the worst elements of nationalized industry, free market, and monopoly practices and mashes them into a lumpy slurry. Part of the result is that whenever a utility builds something new (be it a new reactor or a new set of power lines) they get authorization from the regulators to price those investments into their customers, with a certain percentage of profit.

In the past utilities did a practice dubbed 'gold-plating', whereby they'd massively overinvest in core infrastructure in order to overcharge their customers and reap relatively surefire profits... and the crackdown on this practice has often led to the pendulum swinging the other way, with utilities underinvesting in core infrastructure because they don't consider it profitable enough.

At any rate, my point is that "letting us have frequent power outages" is something a utility company might do as part of a long-term strategy for reaping profits (and they certainly do play the long game), though that objective being green energy is rather less likely. In my work experience most utilities don't give a hoot about the particular type of power, they just want money and (political) power. There are a few outliers that are wholly devoted to coal or nuclear, though those choices are generally linked to the aforementioned money and power.

[McTraveller]

I think an overwhelming observation about most modern politics is: "you can pay for it now, or you can pay a lot more for it later."

I'm fairly certain most people are opting for deferred payment :/

[The_Explorer]

So while I've tried my best at remaining as positive as possible, and it does look good from what I'm reading in most places.

But from all of yours point of view, how does it actually look for democrats coming up tomorrow? Is it as I've said and we are kicking butt in comparison to what they predicted, or should I actually start getting a bit worried? I know its a day early as of this post...but I dunno getting bad feelings. But again still trying to stay as positive as possible

[Lord Shonus]

Short answer is that nobody fucking knows. Polls have been degraded, and most of the analysists are openly thumbing the scales based on little more than gut feeling. Best thing to do is vote, and encourage others who feel the same way as you to do the same.