this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
138 points (97.9% liked)

politics

31297 readers
2688 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
  3. No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
  4. No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

• Register To Vote

• Citizenship Resource Center

• Congressional Awards Program

• Federal Government Agencies

• Library of Congress Legislative Resources

• The White House

• U.S. House of Representatives

• U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

• News

• World News

• Business News

• Political Discussion

• Ask Politics

• Military News

• Global Politics

• Moderate Politics

• Progressive Politics

• UK Politics

• Canadian Politics

• Australian Politics

• New Zealand Politics

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Senate Democratic candidates are edging out or polling neck and neck with their GOP counterparts in five competitive Senate races this cycle — the latest indicator that Republicans are facing a tough midterm environment in even more traditionally redder areas, according to new surveys of the races.

Polling released by The New York Times and Siena University on Saturday found Democrats leading by 6 points in the Texas Senate race, 7 points in Alaska, 3 points in Ohio, down 1 point in Iowa and tied in Kansas.

Because the surveys in Ohio, Iowa and Kansas are within the margin of error — 4.5 points in Ohio, 4.6 points in Iowa and 4.6 points in Kansas — those races are essentially tied.

top 33 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

How is it even a race? How fucking stupid are these people?

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago

Paxton's resting face is of a man telling the woman he keeps in his basement to kiss his boot like she really likes it, and not to lie, or else he'll know.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 13 points 19 hours ago
[–] Lyricism6055@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I hear rumblings of many of my previously hardcore Republican acquaintances and family that they are voting fully blue this year.

We'll see... But I've never heard some of them ever even insinuate doing such a thing.

[–] Polisheocket@lemmy.zip 6 points 12 hours ago

Any republicans I know will just mindlessly vote red. It’s what they do

[–] ButtermilkBiscuit@feddit.nl 30 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Get ready to be downright disappointed or possibly distressed at the actual outcome of the midterms. Gerrymandering, racial redistricting, disinformation campaigns, propaganda networks, lawsuits for mail voting, racist state legislatures, and on and on. These are what Democrats are up against and no amount of positive polling is going to fix that shit. When you show up to vote and can't because you've been purged from voter registration remember the polls lol.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 13 hours ago

Biggest one: Citizens United and money is speech.

[–] Pratai@piefed.ca 13 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Oh they’re going to flat-out cheat in broad daylight. There’s no doubt about it. And don’t forget about the armed intimidation campaign that places fascist goons at every polling station.

They’ll kill a small handful nationwide- enough to make people afraid to show up. And that’ll be that.

[–] WizardofFrobozz@lemmy.ca 2 points 23 hours ago

And when it happens, they’ll do literally nothing. Watch.

[–] bunnybunny@lemmy.zip 65 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Unbelievable how this can still be a close race

[–] Malica@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago

I don't trust these polls and haven't since they said Hillary was going to win.

[–] olejellylegs@lemmy.zip 5 points 18 hours ago

“Just IMAGINE how much worse it’d be with a liberal.”

You know like how things weren’t as bad 4 years ago and we way better during the Obama admin.

But yea they’d totally make it worse despite historically, EMPIRICALLY it was better.

[–] HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"But I love pedophilia, genocide and higher gas prices!" - every Republican voter

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

"It's all worth it to own the blue haired liberals."

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 2 points 18 hours ago

and then you'll see endless posts defending those supporting the GOP as lovely people slightly misinformed.

[–] Pratai@piefed.ca 5 points 22 hours ago

Fascism is very popular with today’s ignorant and communist youth.

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You need to factor in propaganda on this one, billions are spent yearly on both small scale operations and large scale projects to push rightwing propaganda to the masses with some having been inundated within it for decades at this point. Frankly there's no real clean way of dealing with this short of pushing for policies that'd make them effectively illegal, mind you this would be rather easy right now because the steps you'd have to take would also catch monopolies so that's a win win.

Personally I'd start with radio since it's a periphery medium at this point so less care could be drummed up. Revoke the business licenses of iHeartRadio due to them being a fucking monopoly and you'd probably nock out half the issues if not more in one go from there it'd just be a matter of strategic deregulation and reregulation to encourage independent/pirate stations to clutter the airwaves and push out anyone who's not them. Hobbiests would kill to just blare whatever they want and if it drowns out the local Rush Limbaugh wannabe that's just a bonus. Basically make it so as long as they don't take advertisement they can do whatever, donations are acceptable but they have to be small scale ones and will be checked for sources, if it has to be done create an office who's job it is to organize payment for these stations basically creating a middleman filter so the stations aren't financing directly.

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Wealth inequality is the root cause. Fix our oligarch problem and the rest becomes plausible.

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago

Oh I'd agree but this would be a first step, far easier to move things along without their mouth pieces yapping. Just consider Kirk as an example, ever since he was converted into a temporary high pressure fountain the right has lost a solid bit of steam. Mind you it's not massively notable with just one example but imagine how much more effective it'd be to shut down say Dailywire or Fox.

Also the rich wouldn't invest nearly as much materials into propaganda if they didn't think it did something, even if it somehow turned out to not be all that notable pissing them off and switching them over to bitching about radio could pull a good bit of pressure off of some groups. In my experience the right generally has limited bandwidth so you can sometimes make them waste time on stupid shit while you deal with other things. Just an anecdote, but when I was working at Amazon I got a right-winger completely side tracked from harassing the trans girl via me yapping about trains for like 2 hours straight, he was stuck bitching about why we don't have more train bound logistics for nearly two months and completely ignored the poor girl.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is no war but the class war.

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

Not to disagree in the slightest, but there are WAY more wars....... but...... class war is primary, for sure. heh.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They'll get closer because trump will panic and start campaigning for them...

Currently he's doing a Hillary victory lap where he's doing rallies in places he's projected to win and ignoring everything close because his handlers know he'll hurt Republicans.

Another week or so and those poll numbers will be worse. Trump will believe he can save them, and when it hurts Republicans in those elections, trump will blame the people who tried to keep him out of it He'll never understand if he had campaigned in those races earlier they have lost by more.

[–] Pratai@piefed.ca 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I remember how good optimism felt. I miss it.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It's not optimism, it's what's logically going to happen. They're distracting him now by telling he's "needed" in the safe states. But we're a month out and these articles and polls will get worse. trump isnt capable of understanding people don't love him, they'll never be able to keep him away from Senate races that are polling close.

[–] Pratai@piefed.ca 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

We don’t live in logical times.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 0 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Life is always logical, if you don't think it is then you're not paying attention to the shit that matters...

Just stop doing that, nothing is stopping you from using critical thinking.

[–] Pratai@piefed.ca -1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

LMAO! Show us how you’re not paying attention without actually saying you’re not paying attention.

I swear dude, it’s like you go out of your way to be on the wrong side of everything.

Reality shows that life isn’t even remotely logical. Life doesn’t follow logical ideology any more that in follows illogical ideologies. It’s controlled chaos. Nothing more. And to think there’s reason for all rings and it works out in the end because it just has to-

Is fucking ignorance on display.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 0 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

...

No need to respond like a boomer with belligerence following confusion

You're never going to make sense of anything doing that, and I'm sure as fuck never going to waste time trying to help you again.

Feel free to keep replying I'll never see it

[–] Pratai@piefed.ca 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

And there’s the ever-predictable bOoMeR accusation, the clear go-to response of every out-of-gas internet-intellectual that thinks they have something to say.

I’m going to go ahead and block you know as you have proven you have nothing worthwhile to ad to any discussion.

[–] harmbugler@piefed.social 5 points 21 hours ago

Looks more like neck and no neck

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

from what i'm reading, many MAGA nutters are shitty he's not going harder on deportations

[–] Wataba@sh.itjust.works 6 points 17 hours ago

This is always the scariest thing to me, and why I repeatedly hammer on about how dangerous the rhetoric of Musk, Joanne Rowling and others is.

Government bigotry and corruption is a dangerous threat. But their followers are even more violent and insane and are looking for any excuse to lash out.