Current polling data has Cruz trailing by 1 point, and Scott's lead has fallen to within the margin of error. If either seat is flipped, that changes this article's projected 51/49 Republican senate to a 50/50 senate with the vice president breaking the tie.
The one part of the argument against the death penalty that I have to object to is the expense. It's more expensive because of the appeals process. There is a lot more opportunity to fight a death penalty case on appeal than there is if you just get a lengthy prison sentence.
Of course, that's less of a reason to keep the death penalty, and more of a reason to address some of the huge flaws in the appeals process (not to mention the rest of the system, but that applies either way).
He'll say the opposite thing in the next sentence. Fuck, he'll say it in the same sentence. Though I suppose that's easier when you ramble incoherently and jump from topic to topic without ever finding the end of a sentence.
Let's also not forget that this is the guy who argued that "some folks need killing" and seemed to be saying that this was a reasonable (perhaps even necessary) response to people getting "cancelled" and social media banning people for the things they say.
I expect it to be a buggy mess that has lots of potential and doesn't deliver on half of what it seems like it should do. Then after a year or two it will finally be patched into being mostly stable and mods will have reached a point where it can mostly be turned into the game I actually want. However there will be a few creative decisions that I absolutely hate but which are so unnecessarily locked in that even mods can't fix them, so I'll have to just accept them as an irritant that I will do my best to ignore.
Being recognized as the only sane choice by people across the political spectrum and by nonpartisan organizations that rarely if ever endorse presidential candidates is generally going to be helpful for a campaign.
While there are plenty of people on Lemmy acting like this is a deal breaker, I highly doubt any of those people were ever going to vote for Harris.
And even if there is a nonzero number of votes lost to third parties or staying home because of this endorsement, those lost votes are almost certainly less likely to be in battleground states, and are only worth half as much as any independent or republican leaning votes that would otherwise have gone to Trump.
Who would have guessed that they were all communist, fascist, Marxist RINOs?
Obviously these former elected officials, military leaders, national security experts, etc from every administration in the last 40 years are all just trying to destroy America.
We should laugh. It's better for our mental health. It deflates their image in the eyes of those who share our laughter. And it drives these shit heads even more nuts, making them act even weirder, and making us laugh even louder
What we mustn't do is get complacent. We need to push hard no matter how we think it's going. If it's a tight race, we fight to take the lead. If it's looking like a victory, we fight to make it a blowout. The bigger the margin, the harder it will be for Trump to fight it after, and the more likely it will be that we won't have to deal with an impossibly divided and obstructionist legislature.
A lot of talk about how the law prevents the president from stopping funding for policies they might oppose. Which should last for all of 5 minutes if Trump gets back into office.
Gotta love how he completely ignores her answers and asks follow up questions that imply she said the opposite of what she actually said. And how he repeatedly criticizes her for unequivocally stating her position in complete sentences instead of just saying yes or no, which would be less clear and easier to take out of context.
The long term effects of authoritarians consolidating their power and eliminating the last remnants of democracy and the rule of law is that it no longer matters if any of us are left or right. I'll take having a system that can still be changed over being trapped in under dictatorial rule but taking comfort in the fact that I've remained ideologically pure.
And no, choosing the best viable candidate doesn't just lead inevitably to a shift to the right. If that were the case, we wouldn't be talking about people on the right endorsing someone to their left. The fact that Democrats have chosen electable candidates when Republicans chose Trump loyalists and MAGA nutcases is the main reason why Republicans have underperformed since 2018, and why they keep sabotaging their own efforts fighting with their own party members. Their most recent victories are largely due to courts they packed with right wing judges, something that will only get worse if they win, but which will be gradually undone if they lose.
But this is an argument that's always raging on this site. That particular dead horse has been reduced to a fine paste. I doubt anyone's going to be swayed at this point.
I'm not hear to defend Bush v Gore, the Bush administration, Republicans, Democrats, or anything else.
Fuck it, ok, fine, Bush v Gore was worse. So what? Unless you have a time machine, there isn't anything we can do about that. But Trump poses a threat right now, one which will get much worse if he manages to get back into power. That can still be prevented. If the price that comes at is the knowledge that a few loathsome individuals agreed with millions of people like me on this one narrow choice, that's a small price to pay.
The Harris campaign has not extended an invitation to the Bush administration to come back and take over the White House if she wins. Nor is there some great wave of enthusiasm on the right for Harris, it's just them endorsing the only viable alternative to Trump.
And if Bush v Gore was the biggest threat to democracy in your lifetime, you must have been dead for the last four years. Florida in 2000 was a clusterfuck whose outcome was always going to be determined by how the votes were counted because the margin between the candidates was less then the number of disputed ballots. But after it was over, the country went back to business as usual.
Trump spread lies about the election being stolen, plotted a blatant coup attempt, incited a riot that attempted to overthrow the election by force, and after failing to hold onto power. But unlike in 2000, this didn't stop with one election, Trump and pals have continued to push conspiracy theories and coordinate at the local level to disrupt the entire democratic process. You've got armed nut jobs threatening poll workers, and local election rules being written specifically to maximize the disruption they can cause to elections. It's now the norm for Trump supporters to see elections as inherently invalid if their side loses, with a significant number of those people being willing to support illegal or violent actions if it will give them the win they want. Even if Trump loses, the damage he's inflicted to American democracy will likely last for decades.
The people who are saying this is a deal breaker weren't going to vote for Harris anyway.
Trump is a threat to democracy, stands in direct opposition to the rule of law, embraces authoritarianism, undermines national security, alienates allies while emboldening enemies and rivals, enables nutcases and violent extremists, has called for the constitution to be thrown out, has stated he intends to use the government to persecute his political rivals, has declared that members of his own administration should be executed for being more loyal to the country than to him, and managed to get the Supreme Court to declare the president to be above the law. And that's barely scratching the surface.
Even for conservatives, that list sounds very bad. Bad enough to outweigh major policy disagreements. It really shouldn't be that hard to understand why some of them might be willing to endorse the only viable alternative.
Current polling data has Cruz trailing by 1 point, and Scott's lead has fallen to within the margin of error. If either seat is flipped, that changes this article's projected 51/49 Republican senate to a 50/50 senate with the vice president breaking the tie.