Mr.TaterSalad

The 538 generic ballot average is R+.3. The Real Clear Politics generic ballot average is R+.9. Fox News had a poll just two weeks ago that was R+3, Emerson R+1. So R's are still ahead in the generic ballot averages. Maybe that will change with time. Additionally, Fox News had a poll and it asked voters what are the most important issues and who trust the most to handle them and Democrats were getting crushed in that. Overall, 41% say inflation will be most important to their vote for Congress. That’s about four times as many as say guns (12%) and abortion (10%). Next, it’s border security (7%), followed by climate change and crime (5% each), election integrity and voting rights (4% each), coronavirus (3%), and foreign policy (1%). The Republican issue advantages are larger and, importantly, on the top issue. They are preferred on inflation (R+19 points), border security (R+19), crime (R+13), and foreign policy (R+8). A Monmouth Poll from the beginning of the month told a similar story. Nearly half of the public names either inflation (33%) or gas prices (15%) as the biggest concern facing their family right now. The economy in general (9%) and paying everyday bills (6%) are among other financial concerns mentioned. Abortion, which has registered less than 1% on this question in prior Monmouth polls going back to 2015, is currently named by 5% That to me shows that voters don't care about January 6th all that much, and only moderately care about abortion rights and guns. As James Carville correctly stated: "It's the economy, stupid." Note, I am not calling you stupid, just pointing out that people care about economics far and above anything else. People vote with their wallets and for the economic wellbeing of themselves and their families. If gas and inflation stay high, Democrats will pay the political price if the Fox News and Monmouth data are any indicators. It partially explains why a candidates like Tim Ryan can overperform in polling in Ohio and candidates like Sherrod Brown can win there. Same goes with Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and (potentially) Fetterman in Pennsylvania. Fetterman and Ryan run as an economic progressive populists, like Baldwin and Brown do. Their messaging and way of campaigning separates them from the standard Democratic candidates.

I saw Walker up +5 in the poll put out by John Bolton's Super PAC. Data for Progress, which leans D in terms of polling, also had Walker up +2 at the beginning of the month. I know the aggregate shows Warnock leading, but when you look at the data, gas prices and inflation are what voters care about and it's bad for Democrats now. You intermix that with a football God running and that's where Walker gets an advantage.

People in Georgia LOVE football as much as the Alabamans who just elected Tommy Tuberville. I think Walker beats Warnock because it is both a bad year for Democrats due to gas prices and inflation, as well given that Herschel Walker is a football GOD down there. I don't think any of the baggage Walker brings: from holding a razor blade to his girlfriends throat to threating to kill her and her kids to threatening to kill himself to his sheer stupidity to being a huckster for fake Covid cures. Walker went to Georgia, he won the Heisman Trophy in college, is viewed as a football God, and will get lots of crossover and independent voters to go his way on the basis that they remember the good ole days of Georgia football in the 1980's. I don't think it's a blowout by any means, but I think Walker wins by 2-2.5 points and football will be a big reason why.

As Tony Soprano once said, nobody knows anything! I don't think we know all that much about what type of team the Lions will be and still have so many unanswered questions about the roster, individual players, and coaching. What type of QB is Jared Goff; the guy that went to a Super Bowl with the Rams, first half of the season Goff, second half of the season Goff? How good/bad is this roster? How good of coaches are Dan Campbell and his staff? Can they develop talent? Can they make the right decisions in game? Is he Caldwell 2.0 where the players love him but he makes in-game errors? We won 3 games last year with a very bad roster constructed mainly of players from the old regime and had a rookie head coach leading it. I think that makes it harder to make judgement calls and projections for this years team. Last year felt like a throw away given how pathetic the roster was and that it was constructed of mostly holdovers from the Quinntricia regime. In some ways, this year feels like the true first season for Holmes and Campbell to prove themselves. Their fingerprints are now firmly on the roster and coaching. My guess is a total shot in the dark, but I am going with 7-10 for the Lions record and have them finishing third in the division. AFC East Buffalo Bills (13-4) (1) New England Patriots (9-8) New York Jets (8-9) Miami Dolphins (6-11) AFC North Cincinnati Bengals (12-5) (2) Baltimore Ravens (11-6) (6) Cleveland Browns (6-11) Pittsburgh Steelers (4-13) AFC South Indianapolis Colts (10-7) (4) Tennessee Titans (7-10) Jacksonville Jaguars (3-14) Houston Texans (2-15) AFC West Kansas City Chiefs (12-5) (3) Denver Broncos (12-5) (5) Los Angeles Chargers (10-7) (7) Las Vegas Raiders (5-12) NFC East Philadelphia Eagles (10-7) (4) Dallas Cowboys (10-7) (5) Washington Commanders (5-12) New York Giants (4-13) NFC North Green Bay Packers (12-5) (2) Minnesota Vikings (8-9) Detroit Lions (7-10) Chicago Bears (2-15) NFC South Tampa Bay Buccaneers (11-6) (3) Carolina Panthers (9-8) (7) New Orleans Saints (8-9) Atlanta Falcons (3-14) NFC West Los Angeles Rams (13-4) (1) San Francisco 49ers (10-7) (6) Arizona Cardinals (8-9) Seattle Seahawks (4-13) AFC WILDCARD Bye: (1) Bills (2) Bengals over (7) Chargers (3) Chiefs over (6) Ravens (5) Broncos over (4) Colts NFC WILDCARD Bye: (1) Rams (2) Packers over (7) Panthers (3) Buccaneers over (6) 49'ers (5) Cowboys over (4) Eagles AFC DIVISIONAL (1) Bills over (5) Broncos (2) Bengals over (3) Chiefs NFC DIVISIONAL (1) Rams over (7) Cowboys (3) Packers over (5) Buccaneers AFC CHAMPIONSHIP (1) Bills over (5) Bengals NFC CHAMPIONSHIP (1) Rams over (2) Packers SUPER BOWL LVII (1) Bills over (1) Rams

NO WAY these midterm polls, funded by a John Bolton-supported Super PAC, can be correct . . . right?

I don't believe the gap will be that wide in the end, but Oz is an exceptionally terrible candidate to run against a guy with the broad, working-class appeal of Fetterman.

Apparently Klingberg fired his agent and is hiring a new one. That tells me they overplayed their hand and overestimated his value on the market. it also seems to suggest that Klingberg wanted a massive pay day this year, well beyond what teams thought he was worth, given the team-friendly contract he had been on with Dallas. Maybe it's best the Wings didn't bite on signing him and patience proved its worth.

Just sickening that 1-2 fucking people can hold the entire country hostage. I will be donating money the next time Sinema is up for election to whoever her primary opponent is. Hopefully it's someone decent like Ruben Gallego.

Why is it that you often find out how much the most strident homophobes, like Haggard, enjoy eating hot dogs and pie respectively?

The core problem with the Bernie Sanders, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Democratic-Socialists of America (DSA) brand of socialism is they don't know what they want socialism to be. Therefore, they are running around using a term that can't be uniformly defined in a marketable, palatable manner for voters and a term that scares off 60% or more of the American electorate. I think if Bernie had stuck to promoting his big ideas like Medicare for All, Debt-Free College, Democratizing the workplace, etc. and not used the term socialism at all during the campaign, he would have fared better for himself. For me, the Meidner Plan in Sweden from the 1970's is the direction I'd like to see a "socialist" left go. We need to be promoting workplace democracy where workers get a say and decision making power of their own pay, benefits, time off, etc. But it needs to go beyond that too, workers who are employed at a company above a certain size/market share should get to vote for their CEO and Executive Board at large. CEO's, CFO's, COO's, CMO's, etc. should be chartered in a corporate constitution that governs and structures the basic tenants of the company and corporate elections where workers, NOT shareholders, get to vote and decide who leads their company and what direction it will take. Workers should also get a vote and say in major corporate decisions like company mergers and acquisitions, and new product line or service role outs, and more. No, a waiter or waitress at Applebees won't be deciding how many packages of frozen shrimp or napkins need to be ordered this week, nor will they vote on who gets promoted to Store Manager. But if the parent company of Applebees needs a new CEO or if the company decides it wants to merge with Chilis, Red Robin, or Olive Garden's parent company, workers would get a voice in that conversation. The article below give a decent review of Sweden's attempt at socialism with the Meidner Plan and I think the American left could learn a good deal from it. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2017/11/16/a-plan-to-win-the-socialism-sweden-nearly-achieved/#:~:text=The Meidner Plan was the,been in power for decades.

Democrats have unique problems that Republican don't. These center around the voters that make up the Democratic Party versus those who makeup the Republican Party. The MAGA movement and far right was able to successfully take over the Republican Party and the left/progressive movement has not done so for the Democratic Party. The MAGA movement and Tea Party before it took over the Republicans with some blowback politically but not as much as pundits thought. They won in landslide fashion in the 2010 midterms. They won again, albeit thanks to a flawed system, in 2016 when no one thought they could and pundits were laughing at their candidate and counting unhatched chickens with the Clinton campaign. They then successfully mitigated their losses in the House and held onto the Senate (even flipping a seat with Bill Nelson in Florida losing) when many pundits projected a total annihilation at the ballot box for them in 2018. After the financial crash and derivatives crisis of 2008-2009, that should have been the left's movement to take over. Occupy Wall Street and other progressive organizations should have been able to show the world the incestuous greed and guilt of Wall Street and Corporate America. Show how unfettered and unregulated capitalism wrecked people's lives and ruined them financially. Instead, the left was unable to gain any real traction and the Occupy movement faded, while the Tea Part succeeded. But a unique problem that the Democratic Party has versus the Republicans is that a 1/3rd to a 1/4th of their voters don't really want to be Democrats and only vote Democratic out of the necessity to vote for the lesser of the two evils. Many progressives do not like identifying as Democrats because they see Democratic leaders identifying as capitalists and in-favor of a corporatized society, run by greedy capitalist actors. Many progressives and democratic socialists/social democrats in the United States fundamentally disagree with and reject a core tenant of the party, capitalism. So you're constantly having to fend off progressive primary challenges from that side of the party, deal with a party moving to the left faster than the rest of the country is, and overcome the challenge of motivating an anti-capitalist voters to vote for candidates they feel are flawed and/or downright terrible people. The American Left is a third party without a home and it presents constant challenges for the Democratic Party in convincing them to vote blue year after year. When someone as awful and dangerous as Trump is on the ballot for President, they'll show up. But when that same awful, dangerous person is running for City Council, School Board, County Commission, State Legislature, or Congress, they don't always feel the need to show up and vote or participate in GOTV efforts. Democrats, the left included, care more about the Presidency than down ballot races because we've been trained to care. The other problem the Democratic Party faces that Republicans don't, as often, is the lazy voters within the party. As Motown Bombers has said time and again here, Democrats don't treat voting as a civic duty like Republicans do. We want a Barak Obama, Bill Clinton, or Gretchen Whitmer to come along and motivate and inspire us. When Dems don't feel inspired, they often don't vote. Republicans understand better the consequences than Democrats of what staying home an do. That's why even in "blue wave" election cycles, Republicans can still hold the Senate and mitigate their losses.

The Grand Rapids district where Peter Meijer represents is Biden +9. Kent County is trending heavily blue. Hillary Scholten, the Democratic candidate for the seat, will likely win whether it is Peter Meijer or Josh Gibbs (the MAGA candidate). That said, I don't like the strategy either because it's sort of how we ended up with Trump as a candidate and as President ultimately.

This. The fundamentalist seem to have a general world view that somehow the person being abused or the person raped is at fault.

No idea either. Must be why we've signed so much defensive depth.

I'd also sneak in some Tyler Childers . . .

If there was only one song I was allowed to listen to from here to the end, this would be it. What a beautiful piece of art written by Isbell here.

What a stupid sounding person. If I were under investigation for sex trafficking of a minor like Maddog Matt here I don't think I'd be talking about anyone's anything, physical appearance or otherwise.

What kind of prison sentence, if any, is Bannon looking at?

#Hawlinass now trending on Twitter. Love it!

Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney are doing a great job leading the Committee hearings tonight in the absence of Benny Thompson.

Has anyone seen the clip of Josh Hawley upholding his oath to the Constitution of the United States of America . . . Yeah, I haven't either. Fuck that guy, he deserves to go down with the Trump ship.

LOL!!!!!!!!! Another good one from Fetterman prior to the MLB Allstar Game . . .

Look at the dull bulb you supported. Windmills cause cancer. 😄😄😄

Wasn't Uwe Krupp considered an asshole? And so what if Tkachuk is an asshole, if he get 100+ pts and 40+ goals in a season, as long as he's not toxic in the locker room, who cares. No one will care what type of player Tkachuk is if he's raising and kissing the Cup in a winged wheel uniform.

I wasn't necessarily on or off the Murray wagon. I do think Murray is a talented QB, but that contracting looks like it could be an albatross if the cap doesn't rise fast enough and Murray doesn't play at an elite level. I'm still waiting to see, with little hope, what Goff can bring us this year and if Campbell and Ben Johnson can bring out his best game. If not, we've got the draft capital needed to possibly make a move up the draft ladder and go and get one of Stroud, Young, Richardson, whomever is at the top-tier of the QB class.